Free Agent

by J. C. Nelson

  There’s always plenty of time for tears.

  I went through the front door of the Agency and plowed through a crowd of people who didn’t get the meaning of the term no appointments. In the conference room, Ari stood at the head of the table, the box of papers beside her.

  She looked at me and the fierce expression on her face softened. “M, I’m sorry to bother you. I thought you would want to know. In the office I started going through their files, trying to figure out how long it had been shut down. No bread baked there for over a month.”

  She passed around an order form. “On the other hand, they’ve gotten sixteen shipments like this.”

  Liam looked at it a moment. “Someone’s got an aversion to doctors.”

  I snagged the paper from him. Apples. Thousands of apples. I looked to Grimm. “They doing what I think they’re doing?”

  “Yes. Someone is preparing for a war.”

  “Run down the owner of the bakery, and you’ll find out who,” I said.

  Ari gave me that smile of hers. She pulled out another paper. “I can help there.”

  “‘Health inspection schedule for part C,’” I read.

  Ari shook her head. She tapped the company letterhead, and Evangeline let out a low whistle. “Is that what I think it is?” she asked, though I was certain she was right.

  Ari traced the letterhead with a finger. “My family crest.”

  Twenty-Seven

  LIAM TOOK THE report. “That’s the symbol that appeared in the smoke when you did your hocus pocus on the man.”

  “She’s her family’s seal bearer,” I said. “All her magic has that mark, or it will.” Everyone stared at Ari. At least for once it wasn’t me.

  Grimm cleared his throat. “Did I hear that wrong? Or did Mr. Stone say the princess was using magic?” He kept his tone soft and calm, but I’ve heard him speak like that before.

  “So what did you find?” I asked Evangeline, hoping for a quick topic change.

  Ari had this worried look on her face. “I’ve been learning it myself from the books you sent.” I needed to work with that girl on when to keep her mouth shut. Come to think of it, I needed help with that myself. Perhaps we could take a class together.

  “We found nothing,” said Evangeline. “We searched three blocks in every direction, and there’s nothing. I don’t know where the troll was headed, but it wasn’t going to a portal. Maybe they were going to pick it up with a dump truck or something.”

  “You are not to use magic,” said Grimm. The building trembled slightly, and a corner of his mirror split. “Magic can be deadly, young lady, particularly wild magic.”

  Ari shook her head, but her voice stuttered as she spoke. “I’m not using wild magic.”

  Grimm’s face was bright red, and splits appeared in the mirror from the edges as he screamed, “Of course you are! Those books were meant for Marissa. They were training lessons for an entire generation of witches. Seal magic is impossible to learn on your own. Training takes years and it must be learned from one who already knows how to control it.

  “You have taken the first step down the path of the witch, princess. Think long and hard about how far down that road you wish to go.” He turned that gaze on me, like a school principal and cop in one. “What on earth possessed you to share those with her?”

  Desperate to divert him, I brought up what I’d wanted to tell him, meant to tell him the moment we got a bit of privacy. “Clara,” I said. “Clara was at the bakery. She’s dead.” It stopped him in mid-rant, and I heard a tiny squeak I knew had to be Jess. “What was she doing there?”

  Grimm looked shocked. He wavered in the glass, his image becoming fuzzy, and then sharp again. “She was visiting with Queen Mihail when last we spoke,” said Grimm.

  Jess and Evangeline stood up together. “We’re going to go see her,” said Evangeline.

  “I’ve got a few enhanced interrogation techniques that will have her telling me anything and everything,” said Jess.

  “You will not,” said Grimm. “I share your desire for blood, but I require proof. Since it is trouble you desire, I would like you to accompany the Kingdom Police to see Queen Thromson. It is her company who was manufacturing these weapons, and she knows full well what they were meant for.”

  Liam raised his hand like he was in school. “I actually don’t know what they were meant for.”

  “Mr. Stone, they are weapons nearly perfect for killing the fae,” said Grimm. “Someone wants a war. Marissa, you will go and revisit Queen Mihail. Ask her what Clara was looking into. I will not rest until her killer is in the ground.”

  Not justice, I noted, revenge. Given how Jess looked at the moment, wherever she went off, there’d be more bodies than the city morgue could hold.

  “Princess, no more magic. We will discuss this matter more when time is not of the essence.”

  Ari wiped her eyes. “Yes, sir.”

  “Grimm, can you tell me if Queen Thromson was the one who mugged me? The curse came in her pie box from her factory. Also, I need something to keep Ari in Kingdom,” I said.

  The dais at the head of the table glowed as Grimm invoked his power, and a tiny gold band dropped onto the table. A ring.

  “I will research Queen’s Thromson’s whereabouts. The ring will last until midnight,” said Grimm.

  Typical. I flipped it to Ari and we headed out.

  “I’m coming with you,” said Liam as we rode down to the garage. “I’d like to meet the man who was supposed to get my curse.”

  I thought of Mihail. “Trust me, you don’t.” I wondered if he would ever trust me.

  I knew I should head into Kingdom immediately, but I sat behind the wheel, drumming my hands. An idea kept flitting in the corner of my mind. The more I looked, the more it retreated to the periphery.

  “Are we going to actually, I don’t know, go somewhere?” asked Ari.

  I put the car in gear and drove out in a way that would make Evangeline proud. We hit the interstate and I pushed the pedal down to the floor.

  “Where exactly are we going?” asked Liam as the yellow stripes flew by in a blur.

  “Back. Back to where this started.” The more I thought about it, the more certain I was.

  “How do you know where it began?” asked Ari. She’d called shotgun and forced Liam to fold himself into a pretzel to sit in the backseat.

  “Simple.” I caught my exit. “It’s where my life went crazy.”

  “You jumped out of a window after a troll,” said Liam. “Crazy you’ve got.”

  “Troll’s nothing,” said Ari. “Tell him what you told me about the shaman. Or the orphans. For that matter tell him about the beanstalk.”

  I let the miles roll away in silence, working up the courage to speak. “I jumped out after you.” We pulled off at a gas station and bought four bags of supplies. I believed in being prepared.

  Ari had waited in the car, reading a magazine. When we hit the road again, she wouldn’t leave well enough alone. “From what Grimm tells me, your life has only gotten better this year.”

  I shook my head, confused. “What do you mean, ‘from what he tells you’? What did he tell you?” Grimm knew most of my secrets. He probably knew them all, but was too much of a gentleman to mention it.

  “We talk from time to time, but like I said, I don’t think you had it too good to start.”

  I smacked my hands on the wheel. “I was Grimm’s most trusted agent. I had my own office. I was almost halfway done paying off my debt, and even the freaking gremlins stayed out of my way when I went into Kingdom.”

  Ari turned the page of her magazine. “You had an empty apartment. You had a phone in your apartment that never rang. You had four forms of life in your fridge that could probably survive on Mars. I think what I found in my closet was a cat.”

  “You found Mr. Sniffers? How is he?” I was both elated and terrified by this.

  “Flat.” Ari put down the magazine to look at me, which bugge
d me since I had to keep my eyes on the road. “What kind of life did you think you had?”

  I glanced in the rearview mirror at Liam, wondering why Ari chose now to bring this up. Then I realized I didn’t have any dignity left where he was concerned. “I didn’t worry about now. I kept thinking about when I’d be done, princess.” I didn’t need to say that dream was gone. I might one day talk to my parents, but things would never be the same now that I knew.

  Ari watched out the window as the dairy lands rolled past, and my stomach felt heavy with guilt. I knew how she hated to be reminded of her title. I risked taking my eyes off the road long enough to look her in the eye. “I’m sorry. I always thought there’d be something for me beyond this.”

  Ari reached over and took my hand and squeezed it until I was sure my bones would crack. “Then make something. You never told me what your name was. Your real name.”

  I thought about it a moment. Marissa Lambert didn’t fit me anymore. I didn’t even want their name. Not now that I knew the truth. Even thinking about it made me sick. I wasn’t going to cry in front of Liam. “Locks. My name is Marissa Locks.”

  Ari narrowed her eyes and frowned. “That’s the name he gave you.”

  “No, it’s the name I’m taking for myself. It’ll save me a fortune in monogramming and a trip to the DMV. It’s my name now. Grimm can call his new girls something else.” I cut the wheel and slid onto the dirt roads.

  “Here?” asked Ari, recognizing the smokehouses, and I nodded.

  “Where is ‘here’?” asked Liam.

  “Wolf town,” I said. “Stay in the car.”

  We got out. Wolf town still stank of rotten meat and death, but I knew we weren’t alone from the moment my shoes hit the gravel. A few of the smokehouses were going, trails of ash winding from their chimneys into the sky.

  “Careful,” I told Ari, “I don’t want to piss them off if I can help it.” The car door opened behind me and I heard Liam step out. “I said to stay in the car.”

  He walked up behind me so close I could smell the wood smoke on him, that scent he always had. “I’ve been twisted into a yoga position for the last hour. If I don’t stretch, I’m going to die of a blood clot.”

  “Wolves,” I yelled, my own voice echoing back, “I’m not here for trouble. I want to find out what happened.” In the shadows I heard footsteps and paws on gravel. My arm ached with the memory of my bargaining trip.

  “Look out,” said Ari, and I saw a wolf come running out from between the buildings on all fours, at full speed, straight for Liam. Why it was the thugs always went for the man I didn’t know, but I was ready this time. I shot it in the stomach. I aimed for the chest but wolves run fast.

  Liam looked more than a little queasy at the spray of blood. “When you said wolf town, I didn’t think you meant wolves.”

  “Keep an eye on that one.” I waited, listening to the sound of cows in the distance.

  Liam waved to me. “Hey, um, you might want to—Oh, crap.” His eyes grew wide and his jaw went slack. The wolf continued to morph, growing longer, skinnier, and uglier. Liam took another nervous step away and backed into me. “Werewolf?”

  “Just wolf.” I went over to have a talk. “I said I’m here to look.”

  The wolf pushed the bullet out of the wound, and it dropped into the gravel. “You’re back to kill us. Back to finish what you started.”

  I shook my head. “If I wanted to kill you, I’d have packed silver or maybe the flamethrower. I need to look around. You wolves leave me and my friends alone, we’ll take the unguided tour and leave, okay? If you’d waited, I would have offered you a trade.”

  I walked back to the car and returned with my plastic bags.

  “What is this?” asked the wolf.

  “Every piece of beef jerky in the store, lunch meat, and two cans of bacon bits. We didn’t have time to go to the pig farm.”

  He sniffed it and looked at the label. “There’s a month’s worth of sodium in one of these. You are trying to kill us.”

  “Take it or leave it. We want to look.”

  The wolf rose and snarled at me. “How about I carve something better out of you?”

  I stood my ground. I needed to figure things out, and I was certain this was the place. “You don’t want to do that.” I looked at Liam. “He’s cursed. Take the wrong bite and you might wind up with it too. I drink so much caffeine my blood should be a controlled substance, and I eat so much junk food I’m considered an additive by the FDA.”

  The wolf looked at Ari. “She looks tasty.”

  “Princess.”

  He spat on the ground in disgust and opened a can of bacon bits. Once he’d consumed the can, the wolf grinned at me with almost human teeth, baring them in a smile that looked all too hungry. “Next time bring pigs.”

  I went back and shut the trunk. Ari came up behind me and grabbed my shoulder. “Why didn’t he want to eat me?” She almost sounded upset.

  I patted her on the back. “I’ve heard princesses taste like gym socks boiled in iodine. Didn’t you ever wonder why the dragon never eats the princess?”

  She sniffed her hand and tentatively touched her tongue to the back of it. I went back to the wolf. “How did the fae child wind up here?” I took the safety off the gun for emphasis.

  “A gift. Payment.” He backed away, none too eager to get another bullet.

  “For what?”

  “Figure it out yourself, Red.”

  I wish I’d picked something else to wear on my first visit. I turned away from the wolf. “Come on.” Liam followed me. I went to the bar first, trying to figure out what it was that had bothered me so much last time.

  “So what are we looking for?” asked Liam as we walked across the street.

  I opened the door and a plague’s worth of flies flew out. The inside smelled like someone had combined a morgue and a Crock-Pot. “I don’t know.”

  He left what little food he’d eaten in a puddle at the door. I walked through the bar as my eyes adjusted to the dim lights. Each step sent tornados of flies up behind me. At the back, I swiped a glass and the nearest bottle.

  Liam came along, trying to dodge flies. I held out a glass. “Drink?”

  He mumbled something through his sleeve as I wiped a fly from my glass. I’m fairly sure it was something along the lines of “How can you drink in here?”

  “You get used to it. Not my first massacre cleanup.”

  He took the drink and managed to down most of it.

  I looked over the bar at the dead bartender. “They were just sitting here. Drinking their beer, watching the game. The fae came in and killed them all.” I took a closer look at the bodies closest to me. Like those by the door, their skin lay in crumpled heaps near the wall.

  Liam still looked sick, so I grabbed a bowl of peanuts from the end of the bar. “Take a handful of peanuts. It’ll help calm your stomach and keep the smell out of your nose.”

  He looked at the bowl in the dim light, and sniffed it.

  “I ate at Froni’s with you. This place couldn’t possibly be any dirtier. Have a peanut.”

  He took one out and chewed it, then choked, spit it out, and wretched over the bar. “Not a peanut. I think it was an earlobe.” After a moment, he regained control of his stomach. “What does this?” He managed to speak and cover his mouth at the same time, as he gestured to the bodies.

  “Fae magic. Big white beam of death. Solid concrete would stop it, but most buildings around here are cinderblock or wood. They cast it from the door and killed everyone.”

  Liam slipped off his stool and headed to the door. Leaving, I guessed, for air with fewer legs and wings. He stopped at the door and turned around. As he walked from side to side I watched his gaze, and in an instant I understood.

  I walked to the door and looked. When last I came here it was too ugly, too bad for me to tell, but now I saw the same thing he did. There was no way someone had stood at the door and done this—the wolves at the b
ar and the wolves at the back were killed from the same direction. We hit the door and ran out into the air, which smelled so sweet.

  I looked around. “Where’s Ari?” I’d left her by the car, but now the square stood empty. I ran through the wolf town, listening for footsteps in the shadows, hearing a door shut somewhere. “Ari!” I yelled, and Liam came after me. “If you hurt her, I’ll finish what the fae started.” No one answered. Above the wind, I heard her soft sobbing.

  I followed it back, back closer to the square, to the wolf larder. The door stood open and in the shadows Ari knelt, tears streaming down her face. “You can’t tell, can you? You don’t know what happened here.”

  “What was it?” I went over and stood by her.

  “Death. It didn’t kill them the normal way. It tore them out of their bodies. Smeared their souls across the ground.”

  I took her shoulders and turned her away. “You didn’t say anything about this last time.”

  “I’ve used a lot more magic. I see better now.”

  “What were you doing here in the first place?” asked Liam, and I told him. About the wolves. About the pigs. About the kids. “You come down every week to negotiate with wolves. To trade for children?” He’d had a lot to take in in the last few weeks.

  “Every week. They’ve always found new ones.”

  He looked inside the larder and winced, growing pale. “What if you skip a week?”

  I shook my head. “They’ll make fresh bacon bits. They had a fae child.”

  “I can tell. It’s like a footprint in the magic. He was here a few days at least.” Ari put her hand out toward the door, like she could reach out and help them.

  “The wolves ate one of these fae?” asked Liam.

  “No,” I said. “If they had, the fae would have already killed every living thing in the state. They took a fae child. The question is how they got to him in the first place.” I walked out of the larder and back into the square, gauging a line from the bar. Grimm made me take geometry twice, the second time on my own dime. I hated him for it then and loved him for it now.