Free Agent

by J. C. Nelson

  The room was completely empty, with warped wood floors. Out of a porthole window, I saw an ocean of blue-green water. A massive picture frame filled one wall, and the floor was covered in mirror shards. I picked up a tiny fragment and felt his familiar presence. This was Grimm’s original mirror, and it lay in a thousand pieces.

  I knelt in the shards and began trying to piece them together. It must have been hours before I found the first two. I slid them into place, matching their curves. My fingertips were bloody from a dozen tiny cuts, and splinters of glass stuck from my fingers like I was a cactus.

  I painted a strip of silver along the crack, and it solidified. The shard still showed the room, but I also saw, or thought I saw, a ghostly outline. I found another shard, and another, and sealed them into place. I found the next one. That’s when I realized I could see him, looking out at me with those quiet eyes like always. I slid another piece into place, and as it sealed, he spoke.

  His voice had a weird echo in it, like a long-distance call. “If you don’t mind, my dear, I will offer a hand.”

  “Be my guest.” The sea of glass quivered, shook, and slid. One piece flicked through the air to snap into place, and another, and another.

  “Silver,” said Grimm, and I painted them. Now the shards moved like mice, scampering to the right places. As I painted them in, the glass flew faster and faster. At last the flask of silver rose out of my hand.

  “Marissa, hold out your hands.”

  I did, and the splinters flew from them like darts.

  The fleshing silver rose out of the vial, assuming the shape of a spider web, sealing the last tiny specks.

  When Grimm spoke now his voice echoed in the room like he was yelling. “Ah. That feels better.”

  I would have hugged him if it were possible. “Good to have you back.”

  “I owe you my existence, my dear. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but may I ask how exactly it is you can be here without my geis?” I’d never seen Grimm look like this. His grin was so wide it had to hurt, and at the same time I thought I saw a hint of anger in his eyes, or determination.

  “I paid a witch most of my Glitter to curse me.”

  He nodded his head. “Of course you did.”

  “I need your help. I have to find Ari and Liam, and I have a score to settle with a prince.”

  Grimm nodded. “You have it. We’ll discuss the matter of your payment when we are done.”

  “I know. I’ll do whatever it takes.” I knew that was coming. Nothing is free in life, not even death.

  He opened his mouth in surprise and wrinkled his nose. “Marissa, I meant my payment to you. But first we have business to deal with.”

  I looked out the door into the dwarf house. “We can’t go out the way we came in. There’s a guard who thinks the house is infected with the Red Death.”

  “My dear, this is why I insist you keep up-to-date on your plague immunizations. Red Death, Black Plague, you needn’t fear any of them. Where, may I ask, did you find fleshing silver?”

  “My favorite witch.” I held up my hand to show him. “I have the mark.”

  He followed the pattern on my hand where the blood had dried to scabs. “Of course you do.”

  “Why? Why would she mark me? I don’t have magic, I don’t have scales or breathe fire, I don’t have Glitter. She could have a thousand people, why me?”

  Grimm crossed his arms. “The Black Queen is dead, Marissa. I saw her body burn myself, and you have felt her bones with your own hands. I don’t know how she reaches from beyond the grave to do this, but I understand her choice.” He paused, searching for the right words. “Do you know what a handmaiden does?”

  “Apply hand lotion? Trim cuticles? File nails?”

  He leaned in, and it felt like I was back in training, being taught by him for hours. “Maybe now, maybe here. In her day and age, you would be called my handmaiden.”

  I shivered, remembering how the Root reacted to me in my apartment. “I will never be her agent.”

  “Of course you won’t. Now let us make ready. I’d like to take you to the Agency.”

  “Things didn’t work out so well last time I used a portal.” I glanced around nervously. My blessings had a penchant for breaking glass when they felt threatened.

  Grimm waved his hand. “You’re allowed two pieces of luggage, my dear. I’ll bring your pets as well.”

  I nodded. The floor under my feet caught fire as green flames burned portal runes into the floor. The world folded in on itself when the portal activated, then grew outward again. We were in Grimm’s office. “We’re going to arm you.” The doors on all the safe boxes clicked open.

  I headed for the wall. “Spells. I want the big boys. No more playing with elemental magic.”

  “I think not, Marissa. Magic has never obeyed you. Open the third drawer in, twenty-seventh up.” It was a long black case, engraved with writing I’d never seen. Inside were seven perfect silver spheres. “Pick one up.”

  I tried, but my wrist looked like a swollen sausage and every time I lifted my arm higher than my waist, streaks of fire ran down my side. “Don’t think I can aim anymore.”

  He glanced around the empty room as if checking it for watchers. “Just this once, Marissa, I’ll make an exception.” I felt my wrist pop, and nearly threw up in my mouth as my shoulder wrenched itself right. With teeth gritted, I held on as my muscles and tendons stretched back to the right places. “I wouldn’t get too used to that, my dear.”

  I let out the air I’d held in on a groan. “Don’t worry. I won’t ask, I promise.” Now, however, my hands worked perfectly well to pick up one of the silver orbs. I took one in my fingers. It felt like putty on my fingertips. As I held it, it changed, becoming longer, harder. It transformed into a perfect bullet.

  “Each of those took fifty years and the blood of a seventh son to make. There’s nothing I know of they won’t kill and let me be absolutely clear on this: I do not want you to be concerned about the cost. Use them to kill anything that gets in your way.”

  I knew Grimm ran orphanages and drug recovery houses, but I’d never heard or seen the paperwork for a blood bank. “How’d you get them to volunteer their blood?”

  He looked off into the distance. “Volunteer may not be exactly the right term. One does not capture the essence of death with a vial full of blood.”

  I loaded the rest of the rounds into a magazine, and slapped the magazine into my gun. “One last problem, Grimm: I can’t bother with a cell phone. Need my old bracelet back.”

  “No.” Grimm looked at me over his glasses, his jaw set.

  “No?”

  “Those bracelets are for employees.” The dais next to his desk glowed, and on it formed a perfect silver circle. “That is one for a partner.”

  His words took a moment to make sense, but over the months with Ari I’d remembered what happiness felt like. This was it. Freedom meant being able to go and being free to stay, and that simple choice made all the difference in the world.

  “Give me a moment,” I said, and I ran down the hall to the Visions Room. Inside, I waited for it to start, and as the light drained away I looked at my blessings and my curse. The damage was worse than I thought. How the thing had survived I couldn’t say.

  “Blessing?” It came forward, glowing. “I’m going to need your help.” I reached out to the curse, and he nipped at me again. “Curse, I want you to come too. You may be a curse, but you are my curse. I claimed you.”

  Grimm appeared on the mirror outside. “Marissa, there isn’t much time.”

  “Is there ever?”

  “You’ll need to get there quickly, and the Agency cars are missing.”

  It was about time I got the princess treatment. “You summoned me a pumpkin?”

  Grimm rolled his eyes. “I called you a cab.”

  Thirty-Two

  ON THE WAY over, I brought up a few tiny details I thought Grimm might have overlooked. “Let’s start with where
exactly we’re going.” Impromptu worked fine for me. In fact, it was something I did better than planned. The problem with impromptu in a cab was you could run up quite the fare. Also, when there was a fae army heading straight into downtown, it was not the right time to go for a sightseeing tour.

  Grimm spoke from the rearview mirror. “Ari is at the castle. Liam is a bit more difficult to locate, since he isn’t wearing his bracelet anymore. Speaking of which, do you like the new one? It should work in Kingdom as well.”

  “Fantastic, though I might want one in gold. If you want to find Liam, try looking for a dragon.”

  “How obvious, in hindsight.” His eyes lost focus for a moment. “Half dragon, Marissa. I thought I trained you better. Also at the castle.”

  “Prince Mihail is working with Fairy Godmother. He knew about the curse. Said he wanted it. Ever heard of someone wanting a curse?”

  Grimm waited in silence until I got his point. “A half dragon is something you would have to see to appreciate,” he said.

  “Seen him, touched him, got the scale marks to prove it.”

  Grimm shook his head. “If a man learned to control that sort of power, he would be worshipped and feared.”

  The cab pulled to a stop and I blinked. “Grimm, we at the right place?”

  “I’m certain of it.” We were parked outside the castle. The old castle. “Listen to me, Marissa: Within the castle there may yet be paths to her domain. Promise me you will not enter any mirrors.”

  “Fine.” I reached for the door and it locked.

  “Listen! You have read about the Black Queen and how her lies became truth as she spoke them. Within our domains it is so for the fairy. It is not just material we may bend.”

  “Kinky. Now let me out.”

  “My dear, this is no joking matter. In her realm, her choices would become yours, her thoughts yours. If you followed her, the person who returned would be only what she made them.”

  The door unlocked.

  “Ok. Mirrors bad.” I exited the cab, paid my fare, and set off to save my boyfriend, my best friend, and possibly the city. In that order.

  The first clue someone had taken up residence at the old castle was the troll. Seeing a troll in Kingdom wasn’t unusual, but this one wasn’t looking to lie on a street corner and collect coins for marrow. It lumbered out to meet me. I pulled my gun from my purse and gave Grimm’s super bullets a try, putting one right through its belly button.

  In the movies, you always see people shooting to the head. Head shots may get more attention, but I’ll take a solid body shot any day, because you are ten times as likely to pull it off. The troll rippled like water, and the flesh melted from it, leaving a smoking skeleton where it had once stood. Nice.

  “Grimm, any idea where I’ll find Ari or Liam?”

  The new bracelet worked perfectly, and he snapped into view on the door knocker. “Ari is your priority. Without her power Liam becomes just an interesting prisoner.”

  “Why is that?”

  “They’ll want to recover the curse, not just kill Mr. Stone. A soul sieve takes immense energy to separate a curse from a person’s body and soul. Torturing a seal bearer would supply that power.”

  I’d looked up a soul sieve after Grimm mentioned it the first time. The drawings resembled a food processor the size of a room, thousands of enchanted blades that would slice a body to pieces. Once the magical deflectors engaged, the soul would leak out one end as a slimy green liquid, the curse out the other, to be captured.

  I pulled on the door, and it ground open. At one time, there was an entire team of liveried house servants to open those doors.

  The castle was big. The new castle was about seven times the size, because it housed most of the actual government for Kingdom, but the old one was plenty large. Too large to go exploring in all the nooks and crannies. Fortunately I had a good idea where to find Ari. See, Fairy Godmother was sort of a stickler for tradition. Apples, snake curses. Myself, I’d keep the prisoner on the ground floor, in a blind hallway with murder holes in it. Ari would be in the tower, for sure.

  I opened door after door, and finally called for help after finding my sixth empty conference/ball room. “Grimm, I could use help. Directions? Maps?”

  “My dear, I would love to assist, but I have to point out there’s another fairy at work here. Her magic is countering my own to the point where simply communicating is difficult. Once she is aware of your presence, even that may be impossible.”

  “Nice knowing you, Grimm.” I reached the main chamber of the castle, and I saw what stood between me and Ari. Grimm would have hired mercenaries, a whole freaking boat of them, if he were going to guard a castle. Godmother hired wolves. I’m guessing every wolf that wasn’t in the wolf town was in the castle, plus they must have been having a wolf family reunion with folks from out of town. They lounged in the central chamber, dozing or scratching, in wolf, human, and every form in between.

  The other thing to note was that wolves made lousy guards. Mercenaries would have patrolled the grounds, set up perimeters, that sort of thing. All the wolves did was sit around and gnaw at their fleas.

  “Marissa,” whispered Grimm in my ear, “don’t attack them. I’ve sent help.”

  That’s about when I heard the howling. From a hallway across the chamber, came a pack of wolves at full speed. Their mouths were frothy, and their fur matted with blood. They weren’t hunting. They were running. Behind them, two women walked out, calmly, slowly into a cloud of wolves. Jess and Evangeline.

  Evangeline was dressed like always, loose black pants and a sleeveless purple top. Jess wore something that looked like she had wrapped herself in the night. It was a long, sleek suit that clung to her curves like it was painted on. The fabric glittered as she moved, but otherwise it was like light simply disappeared into her.

  The wolves circled and growled, and Jess pulled something from a sheath on her thigh. A knife. A simple double-bladed knife. The blade shone in the light and I knew it was silver. If the wolves in the chamber had any sense at all they would have run. One wolf attacked and the pack converged.

  Jess and Evangeline moved like a sea of fury. Evangeline broke bones and bent limbs like taffy. Behind her Jess carved wolves the way one carves a turkey. I knew I wouldn’t eat dark meat again for a while.

  A heap of dead wolves lay at odd angles along the floor. The alpha wolf stopped and howled, called back his pack, halting the attack. The wolves ran from the hall on two legs and four, leaving the wounded behind.

  In the silence I felt safe to leave the shadows of the hallway. “Hey.”

  Evangeline spun toward me, and I nearly caught a knife with my throat. “M, I thought I told you to stay someplace safe.”

  “I’m done taking orders. Ari and Liam are here somewhere. Any guesses where?”

  Evangeline thought about it a moment. “There’s a blind hall at the back of the west wing according to my map. They’ve probably put guards along the walls. They’ll shoot anything that moves in the hallway.”

  I grabbed her arm. “The Princess Arianna.”

  Evangeline shook her head. “Tower’s up the main stairs across the hall.” Evangeline took a tiny map out and pointed.

  “The half-dragon will be in the dungeon,” said Jess. “Only place with enough stone to keep him. Also, as I recall, it’s down the hall from the soul sieve. I’ll head down there to find him, you two go get the princess.” She jogged off down a hall into total darkness without fear.

  I felt something coming. The ground shook and the chandeliers swayed. With each step, the wine sloshed from bowls where the wolves had filled their bellies. The formal arches at the end of the main chamber buckled and the doors caved in. I knew now why the wolves ran. The thing that walked in was like a wolf, only larger and heavier. It had white fur covering it and one eye slit so the lid never closed. It stepped forward, crushing the wounded wolves underfoot without so much as glancing down.

  It growled, and I rec
ognized words in the voice. “Red Riding Hood,” and “Fenris.”

  I wished I’d worn something else on that first visit to the wolves. Anything else. I could’ve worn a bikini and caused less commotion. Come to think of it, I’d never caused a commotion in a bikini, but a red sweatsuit was now on my “does not look good on Marissa” list.

  “M, get out of here,” said Evangeline. She was smiling, a true smile, one that made the cuts on her face hang wide open, and her eyes were wild, wide like she’d found a treasure.

  “I don’t feel like fighting fair,” I said, pointing my gun at it.

  Evangeline stepped in front of me. “This one is mine. The Fae Mother said he was coming.” She pulled off the veil and threw it on the floor.

  Fenris began to shake and roar with laughter. He held up one paw, splaying the claws wide. Claws that ended in a green tinge that looked like rotting death. I knew in that moment exactly what Evangeline had gotten into a fight with.

  I put my hand on her shoulder and pushed her aside. “I said I’m done taking orders, and all I need is a clear shot.”

  Fenris leaped at me, a blur of flying fur. Something hit me from the side. I flew through the air and crashed into a bench. Evangeline had thrown me a good eight feet. She had always fought barehanded, but now she held knives in her hands, wicked, curved knives, with blades that twisted.

  Fenris swung at her, and she dodged. This time she sliced him, carving meat from bone all the way up to the shoulder.

  He fell to the side, howling. As I watched, the skin knit itself back together as though it had never been torn. “Run,” I yelled, but they were already at it, claw and blade, in a dance so close it was impossible to separate them.

  I needed a clear shot, and there was as much Evangeline as wolf in my way. They moved back and forth across the floor, and Fenris shifted like putty as he did. Sometimes on four feet, sometimes almost a hulking man, always a blur of death. Evangeline had blood running from her face, and her purple top shone with what I hoped was wolf blood. He went for her throat.