by J. C. Nelson
I wanted a few more moments alone, but Grimm appeared in an antique silver mirror Liam kept on his office door.
“Sir, show me the blade.” Grimm’s eyes shone with excitement.
Liam picked up the sword, a long, thin two-handed weapon. He swung with ease, cutting arcs through the air, spinning and slashing. Two years of theater and performing Macbeth could teach a man a lot about how to look pretty with a sword.
“What do you think? Handle was ruined, and there was no way to save the original edge, but I was able to reuse the metal.” He held it out for Grimm’s approval.
Grimm shivered and closed his eyes, nodding. “Looks don’t matter. It’s a message as much as a weapon. My daughter will understand the meaning.”
I put one hand on Liam’s biceps, turning him toward me. “How about filling me in on the meaning?” Exactly what these two had planned, they hadn’t shared. I had ways of making Liam talk.
“Marissa, this blade is ancient,” said Grimm. “And it’s one the Black Queen has an intimate history with. She will recognize it, and the message I’m sending.”
Liam flipped the sword over and handed it to me.
I never did like swords. No matter how I swung, I couldn’t manage to get the pattern, the fluid movements that I’d seen him use. “Is this the sword that killed her?”
“Yes, my dear.” Grimm crossed his arms, a thin smile on his face. “Created for her death, kept by my own sentimentality, and given new purpose by our master blacksmith. She aims to use you as a shield, but I will find a way to kill her, just as I did before.” The way Grimm said that made me shudder, and sent a chill down my spine, even in the forge. Grimm disappeared without so much as a good-bye.
I carefully placed the sword on a rack, afraid I might break it.
“It’s stronger than it looks.” Liam walked up behind me, brushing past, and took it. Holding it at eye level, he dropped it on the floor, where it clattered against the concrete. “Flexible. Sharp. Able to endure almost anything.” He put both hands on my shoulders, and I returned his gaze. “Like you.”
I melted into his arms like a pat of butter in a hot skillet. At work, I could be the sharp-tongued, hard-ass lady in charge. Around Liam, I could be someone softer. More innocent in some ways. Much less innocent in others. I wrapped my arms around him and put my head on his shoulder, breathing in the scent of smoke he always carried. “I’m afraid of her.”
“She’s the Black Queen. You have reason to be. Grimm and I are going over handmaiden lore, all of it. And I’m going into Kingdom to speak with the doorman at the Court of Queens. There’s so much of this stuff people don’t pay attention to. The details matter.” Liam ran his hand down the back of my head, sliding his fingers through my hair.
The doorman kept the history of the court. Enforced the rules of the reigning queen. Bestowed and took away titles. For a jolly little fat man, he wielded a lot of power.
“While you’re there, could you ask him to take back the title?” I’d gotten into an argument with a psychotic queen and wound up with a royal title I could neither accept nor get rid of. The doorman insisted it was my due payment, and Grimm still believed he’d find a way to make money or magic off of it.
Liam shook his head, his stubbly chin brushing my forehead. “I was thinking we could go together. In the morning. Let’s stay here tonight. Order takeout. Talk.” In the back corner, a tiny bedroom and kitchenette were the final remnants of Liam’s bachelor life, when he’d lived here, working iron into sculptures.
I’d never cared for it, but now that I didn’t know how long we’d have, I didn’t care where we stayed, as long as we stayed together. “Yes.”
Nine
I SLEPT BETTER curled up next to Liam than I dreamed possible, waking when the sun rose high enough to shine through the skylights of his workshop. Liam lay propped up on his elbow, watching me. I rubbed my eyes and shook away the last vestiges of sleep. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
Liam leaned over and kissed me on the forehead, his rough stubble scratching against my skin. “Grimm said to let you sleep. Take a day off. I told him about going to talk to the doorman today. You know anything about Ari’s ‘shortcut’?”
I did. Despite her protests, Ari was, and would remain, a princess for her entire life. I’d kid her about it, but it felt like teasing her for having acne or some other disease she couldn’t help. As a princess, the Court of Queens was always open to her. No matter where in Kingdom the door to the court might actually be, Ari’s closet would lead straight there. “Yeah. I’ve got a key to her house. We’ll take the fast way.”
Liam glanced at his phone and swore under his breath. “Oh, crap. Can we stop by the apartment?”
“Of course.” I put one hand on his cheek. “Anything you want.”
Liam put his fingers in his mouth and whistled, a sound that would have made a freight train envious. In response, footsteps like a ferret scampered across the roof of his workshop. A moment later, the front door opened.
“Yes, my liege?” Svetlana’s lilting voice drifted into the bedroom. “What is your desire?”
The way she said desire made me desire to hit her with a cross. Even Grimm had admitted that while Svetlana’s kind of vampire wouldn’t be harmed by religious symbols, if I sharpened the edges of one and swung it at her, odds were she’d understand. “Was she on the roof all night?”
“I put a packing crate up there and ordered her to stay out of sight.” Liam rose and shouted, “Today’s your appointment, right, Svetlana?”
Svetlana opened the door to the bedroom without even knocking and walked in.
I glared at her to deliver my “Knock before entering, or better yet, burst into flames and die” look, and my mouth dropped open. I’d been raised not to stare, but some situations simply demanded a stare or two. The leathery-skinned hag in our doorway wore Svetlana’s white tennis outfit but, other than that, couldn’t possibly have been the same woman. I mean vampire. Her once-golden hair hung in thin white strands, and she had enough liver spots for a pack of leopards.
I glanced to Liam. “Is that—”
“Yes.” He didn’t look toward me. “I meant to tell you, it’s time for Svetlana’s antiaging treatment. If she doesn’t get it once a year, she’ll turn to dust.”
“She needs blood.” I glanced around, wondering where exactly I’d left my purse. And my gun. If she turned to dust, I’d hire a maid to clean the place and consider it money well spent.
The hag, I mean, Svetlana’s lips drew back over withered gums. “Never. I require much more refined treatment. And soon, my liege.”
“We’re heading right over.” Liam rose and shut the door, letting me scramble to get dressed. “I was going to surprise you with a vacation from her. I know how you feel about her.”
I slipped on my pants and bra. “I know how everyone else looks at her.” And in the part of my mind that was rational, I knew how Liam never did. The problem was, the part of my mind reacting to her wasn’t rational, and didn’t care.
We took the bus back to my apartment, and Svetlana got the senior discount on all three legs.
When I unlocked the door, she pushed past me, surprisingly fast for a woman who looked to be in her second century. “I already have the supplies, my liege. And the equipment.”
When Svetlana moved in with us, we had a tense first night, with her demanding to lie on the floor beside our bed. I objected to a grown woman, particularly one who never slept, lying awake at night, just watching us. So she grudgingly existed in the front bedroom, where we now headed.
I wouldn’t have recognized it as my guest bedroom. Inside, humidifiers saturated the air to the point where a goldfish could have survived, swimming through the air. Lush tropical plants lined the walls. Oranges and pomegranates still on the tree, pineapples in short pots. The carpet had been replaced with grass, pure wheat
grass, but what really got my attention was the bed.
Or the lack thereof.
The bed, left over from the days when Ari lived with me, was gone. In its place lay a crystal coffin. At the top of the coffin stood a machine that resembled a lawn mower combined with a food processor.
Svetlana walked over and handed me a sheet of paper. “Follow the instructions. It is so easy, even you could do it.” With that, she began to strip. And if I’d been envious of Svetlana’s figure before, the only green-eyed monster in the room was the one getting naked. Let’s just say there was no part of her body not heading south for the winter. Liam had never shown any aversion to the female figure, but even he looked away.
Svetlana opened the coffin and worked her way in, creaking and cracking at her joints like an army of senior citizens doing jumping jacks. “Begin.”
I read down the list. “Twenty-four pineapples.” With Liam’s help, I dumped them one at a time into the machine, which started on its own, spewing chunks of crushed pineapple into the coffin. Next came one hundred and thirty pomegranates, thirty-five gallons of yogurt, and most of the wheatgrass. By the time we were done, all the fruit trees lay bare.
Liam left the room and came back with a jar full of Maraschino cherries and a bottle of gin.
“Martinis?” I looked around to see what we could use for garnish.
“Hoping to give her a little color and some personality,” said Liam. He dumped the cherries in, followed by the whole bottle. “Last step is to turn on the grow lights.” With his foot, Liam nudged a switch. Twenty thousand watts of spotlight lit up the coffin, which was basically a vampire smoothie. I hoped the electric bill was covered by our agreement with the vampires.
I stepped out of the tropical room of horrors. “Give me five minutes.”
“Five minutes as in three hundred seconds, or five Marissa minutes?” Liam shut the door behind him. “If it’s Marissa minutes, I’ve got time to watch the first half of the game.”
“Five If-You-Know-What’s-Good-For-You-You-Keep-Your-Mouth-Shut minutes.”
After I’d showered and put on some fresh clothes, we drove over to Ari’s house, recognizable as the only house where the lawn clipped itself, the ivy that covered the front never dared cross the windows, and generally speaking, you expected a singing animal to pop up at any moment.
“Man, she’s done a number on this.” Liam ran his hands along the fence, a fence he helped weld back in place after a few demons nearly tore the house apart. Last time Liam came here, the house was the lair of an undead sorcerer, my lawyer.
I unlocked the front door, almost looking for Ari’s pet hellhound, who wasn’t going to be showing up, since he was even deader than before. “We have to go up to her room.”
Liam followed me up the stairs, where pictures of Wyatt and his family covered the walls. Ari’s own family would only find their pictures on walls entitled “America’s most bitchy” or “Wanted for extreme betrayal.”
Say what you want about Ari, her bedroom was a complete pigsty. In fact, the three little pigs would have been embarrassed to wallow through that room. I kicked a shipping box of “As Seen on TV” items out of the way, a testament to Ari’s favorite hobby: online shopping.
“Somebody likes cheese-o-matics.” Liam moved the kitchen appliances over to the side. The stack wobbled and then crashed into a pile of coal-powered fondue sets.
“Somebody had a crush on Billy Mays.” I opened Ari’s bedroom door, and immediately regretted it. A wave of absolute crap collapsed outward, knocking me over.
“How much would you pay to set this whole place on fire?” Liam tossed a “whirl-a-meal” to the side and helped me to my feet. “Don’t answer yet, there’s more.”
“Very funny. Just push all this onto her bed. We have to be able to close the door for it to work.” I began hurling folding boards, collectible china plates, and an entire collection of “Faces of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 3, Second Edition” beer mugs out into the room.
“Where are she and Wyatt going to sleep?” Liam didn’t seem terribly worried by the question.
“If he slept here at all, it would be under the smoothie blender that also makes corned beef.” Of course he couldn’t. Wyatt still had the spell of a witch on him, a lock of his hair given freely by his mother. He couldn’t sleep anywhere outside of the wards Grimm built, or the witch could claim him. “I think that’s enough.” I stepped onto a pile of NASCAR bathrobes, took Liam’s hand, and waited as he closed the closet door.
Fumbling in the darkness, I felt for a doorknob at the back of the closet. “Hold on. We aren’t going to Narnia.”
“Good. You know my rule for talking animals.” Liam made the mistake of letting a talking rabbit bond with him the first year we were together. It took half the Agency staff to hunt that thing down and kill it, even with Grimm helping. “If it talks to me, it goes on a plate with biscuits and gravy.”
No wonder I loved him.
The door at the back of Ari’s closet swung open, and I stepped out into the entrance to the Court of Queens. Never mind that the last time I used it, it opened to an entirely different place.
Behind a velvet rope stood a portly man shaped like a barrel, his arms far too short, matching only his diminutive legs. He held up a monocle to peer at us, and smiled at me, sending a wave of trepidation through me. “Handmaiden. So wonderful to see you return. Have you come to prepare your queen’s quarters?”
“Not exactly.” Liam pushed me to the side, walking right to the edge of the rope. “We’re here to talk to you.”
Liam got exactly the look I got last time I was here. The same look you give a potato salad that’s sat out in the sun for three days, with more black flies than black pepper on it.
“You don’t belong here. The handmaiden is not permitted guests, and you are not a queen’s guard.” The doorman spoke dryly, without threat. As a manifestation of the court itself, he might actually be able to take Liam in a fight. I wasn’t eager to find out.
Liam sighed, smoke blowing from him in a thick cloud. The more agitated he became, the more his curse would come out. “I don’t want to fight, and I don’t want a pedicure. Can we just sit here and talk to you?”
The doorman crossed his arms and tilted his head to the side. “I am an animus of pure magic, born to give refuge to the women of royal families and their select servants. When you leave, this place will no longer exist, until another calls me into being.”
“Please,” said Liam. “I can’t imagine anyone who would know more about the spells that bind a queen and her handmaidens, or the traditions, than you. I’ll stay out here while Marissa relaxes.”
“I’ll what?” Spas remained a location of mystery and terror to me. It wasn’t that I didn’t get facial masks; it was just that the masks were usually gore from blasting yet another fairy-tale creature. Long nails, too, might be good for clawing, but I did more climbing than clawing. “I don’t—I mean, you wouldn’t—”
The doorman cut me off with a glance to Liam. “If the handmaiden were to avail herself of my services, I suppose I’d have no choice but to remain present, and conversation does help pass the eons. If the gentleman would like a seat, I can oblige.”
I didn’t see him perform magic. I didn’t hear a spell, or see the light, but one moment there wasn’t a chair behind Liam, and the next moment there was. Not the most comfortable chair ever, but a nice, wooden one that Liam could definitely break over someone’s head or set fire to, if need be.
The doorman unhooked his rope and waved to me. “The spa is open, and we’re serving chocolate-dipped fruit.”
I gave a terrified look to Liam. I’d always been more comfortable in Sergeant’s Guns and Ammo than Macy’s. “This is so not me.”
“Marissa,” said Liam. “I’ve got a ton of questions, so I suggest you take your time.” He nodded to the doorman, whos
e dour expression said he didn’t appreciate Liam’s presence any more than a wad of chewed gum.
The doorman clipped the rope behind me, and, hand on my back, guided me down the hall and around the back of the court, to the spa. I turned to cast one pleading look to Liam. “Mr. Doorman, aren’t you going to stay and make sure Liam—”
At the velvet rope, an identical copy of the doorman stood, hands behind his back, nodding to Liam as he spoke. I glanced back to where the doorman stood beside me. He shrugged. “Consider me an excellent multitasker. I’ll get to work on your feet immediately.” He ushered me to a salon chair, then shook his head, tsking. “I haven’t seen this much dead skin since the last zombie invasion.”
• • •
AFTER THE PEDICURE, after the thermal spa, after a haircut and facial massage, after more time with a chocolate fountain than should be legal, I finally gathered my clothes. Well, I tried to. When I opened the bag, my normal clothes were gone. The outfit that remained was silk, long sleeved, with onyx buttons, that fit like it had been tailored to me.
I tried them on, admiring myself in the mirror, while the doorman nodded appreciatively. “Do you like them?”
“Love them. Love is the word.” I wondered why Ari never came here.
The doorman smiled, a wide grin splitting his round, fat face. “I knew you would. They are a gift from your queen.”
I bolted for the tunnel leading out of the court, leaving my bag, my purse, everything behind as I raced for the door. I came to the velvet rope and skidded to a stop.
There, Liam lounged in a leather recliner, watching what looked to be next year’s Super Bowl on a plasma TV the size of the wall. Beside him, the doorman rested in an identical recliner, sharing a bowl of popcorn as he droned on, talking with his hands as much as his mouth.
The doorman looked up at me and leaped to his feet, brushing popcorn off. “You forgot your purse, handmaiden.” He reached down behind his podium and brought it out.