“We have an infectious Cinderella back in the real world, and I need to find the Cinderella equivalent of the whiteout wood so I can figure out how to stop her,” I said. “Did you know the wood could take over people’s bodies?”
“Uh, duh,” said Ayane. “We’re all doorways here. The wood does what it wants.” Judi signed something; Ayane smiled. “All of us except for Judi. The wood can’t tell her what to do. Every time it tries to take me, she shakes me out of it. You shouldn’t be here. This place isn’t safe for you right now.”
“I’m picking up on that,” I said. “Call me paranoid, but I really don’t like the fact that the whiteout wood is having a temper tantrum at the same time that someone’s using the Cinderella story to kill people. It’s too big to be a coincidence.”
“It’s not,” said Ayane flatly. “The Cinderella story is testing our borders, and the whiteout wood is reacting out of self-defense. You need to get out of here. Wake up.”
“I can’t,” I said. “I ate an apple to get here.”
Ayane stared at me. Then she turned to Judi and signed something—presumably a summary of our conversation. Judi stared at me before starting to sign back. Ayane nodded.
“Judi says you’re a fool,” said Ayane.
“I think she said a little more than that,” I said.
“Yeah, but there are things I won’t repeat unless I’m serving as a formal translator,” said Ayane. “Do you have someone staying with your body? Someone who’ll wake you up when necessary?”
“I do,” I said. “My body’s safe. Now tell me how to get to the Cinderellas.”
Ayane sighed. “You’re incredibly stubborn, you know that?”
“I do,” I said again. “Which way do I go?”
“East,” she said. “That’s where the Cinderella girls go. To the east, and be careful. Bad things are coming.”
“Bad things are here,” I said grimly, and stepped back out into the blizzard.
The snow was howling past me, the wind struggling to push me backward, but I knew where I was going now; I had a direction, and that lent me the strength I needed to keep moving. The air blowing from the east tasted like cinders and empty rooms. That told me I was going the right way. I fought through the snow, hoping time wasn’t distorting, and that I’d be able to reach my destination and ask my questions before Jeff decided I’d been sleeping long enough and kissed me awake.
“Hello again, little doorway,” purred a voice behind me.
Something slammed into the back of my head, pitching me forward into the snow. Blood dripped past my open eye, painting the world red for an instant before everything went black, and my story slipped into silence.
SLEEPING BEAUTY
Memetic incursion in progress: tale type 709 (“Snow White”)
Status: IN PROGRESS
Henrietta Marchen was a perfect exemplar of her kind. Her skin was white as snow, and never tanned or freckled; the best she’d ever been able to accomplish was a violent burn that turned her entire body as red as her lips, which were the color of fresh-drawn blood. Once, in the third grade, she had gotten in a fight with another student who insisted on calling her a clown. She had blackened both his eyes, and he had mashed her red lips back against her white teeth, until real blood appeared to make the contrast in her coloration even more glaring. She had smiled, bloody toothed and feral, until he started crying for his mommy, and he’d never called her clown again, and her classmates had stopped looking her in the eye.
Her hair was the deep, unforgiving black of a raven’s wing, and when she stood in the sunlight it threw back hints of other colors, buried gleams of blue and purple and green. But she wasn’t standing in the sunlight now, and her eyes—normally so blue, like a morning sky, or a robin’s egg—were closed. She wasn’t moving. She wasn’t visibly breathing. Henrietta lay on the narrow cot like one dead, her hands folded over her chest, and somehow, it seemed to be her coffin; it seemed to be the last bed she would ever know.
Like all Snow Whites before her, and all Snow Whites to come, Henrietta Marchen enjoyed the silent, blameless sleep of the departed. The air around her was cold, and smelled of apples, and nothing stirred.
# # #
This was inevitable.
I leaned against the wall, the half-eaten apple in my hand, and watched as Jeffrey mashed his lips to Henry’s again and again, kissing her in a way that said less about love than it did about despair. I could have told him this was always going to be the ending. He wasn’t a prince, and only princes can wake the dumb bitches when they fall fully into their glass coffins. They’d been able to play at happy ever after for longer than I’d expected. I didn’t think he was going to be grateful about that.
I lifted the apple, turned it to the side without tooth marks, and took a bite. It was firm and crisp and a little too floral for my taste. I’ve never understood the way Snow Whites yearn for apples, but then, they’ve never understood the way I long to kill them all, so I figure it balances out in the end.
The sound of my teeth breaking through the skin of the apple was loud in the tight, confined space that we’d packed ourselves into for this little doomed experiment. Jeffrey raised his head. Salt spots glittered on the inside of his glasses, ghosts of the tears he’d been shedding for the past hour.
“Why won’t she wake up?” he demanded. His voice was low and harsh from crying. “I’ve been kissing her. True love’s kiss always worked before.”
“I am not the expert here, and before you ask, no, I didn’t poison her.” I pushed away from the wall. “But I am the one who’s seen this shit happen before. Henry’s not the first snowflake to fall into the Bureau’s clutches, just the first one to do this voluntarily. You know what happens next.”
“No.” Jeffrey gathered her into his arms, shaking his head violently. Henry hung limply in his arms, as unresponsive as the corpse she so closely resembled. “We can’t.”
“Uh, does this look like an enchanted forest to you? Have you been watching that show on ABC again? Just because she’s a fairy-tale princess, that doesn’t mean the laws of reality don’t apply to her.” I took a step toward him and another bite of the apple at the same time, chewing and swallowing before I said, “She’s in a coma. The apple put her there. We need to move her to the modern equivalent of a glass coffin, or she’s going to die.”
“No,” said Jeffrey.
“The Bureau has doctors who understand this sort of shit. They’ll take care of her, okay? They’ll hook her up to all sorts of tubes and wires and machines that make beeping noises whenever she pisses, and they’ll keep her breathing until they can figure out how to wake her up.” I didn’t mention the fact that waking her up would probably involve taking a prince out of Childe on work release, or that receiving a prince’s kiss would almost certainly cause Henry to be wiped away forever, replaced by the simpering Snow White the narrative had always wanted her to be. I didn’t need to say those things. Jeffrey was a Bureau lifer, and he knew the score, no matter how much he wanted to deny it.
“Did you poison the apple, Sloane?” His voice was still low, but now it was dangerous too, filled with the kind of threat that only comes from a good man who’s been pushed too far.
Normally, I would have applauded Jeffrey growing some balls. But Henry was barely breathing, and Snow Whites who sank too deep into their comas didn’t always wake up again even after a prince got involved. For her sake, I couldn’t fight with him.
“Having friends is awful,” I muttered before saying more loudly, “No, I didn’t. I wanted to. I always want to. But I also wanted her to wake up, because unlike some people I could name, I’m not a psycho who wants to wipe out the whole fucking human race and replace it with a giant ensemble production of Into the Woods. Okay? Now pick up your damn girlfriend and help me find someone who can get her to a hospital.”
Jeffrey stared at me, looking like a startled rabbit. Then he sniffled, nodded, and stood, lifting Henry easily in his arms. The lit
tle Shoemaker was stronger than he looked, and she was lighter, at least right now. She was supposed to be someone who could be lifted by dwarves, and that meant the laws of physics had to bend, just a little, in her presence.
“Good,” I said. “Now move your ass.”
He moved his ass. I followed.
It was a damn shame it was all going to be for nothing.
# # #
“Please state your name.”
The man from Human Resources looked at me like I was less than the dirt beneath his heels. I could feel the shadows of a story swirling around him, intangible but undeniable. I just couldn’t get a fix on them, couldn’t figure out what the narrative had wanted him to be. He was either averted or in abeyance: either free or waiting for the axe that hung over his head to come crashing down and split him in two. HR had a nasty tendency to hire those people, thinking they would “better understand” the plight of people like Jeffrey and Henry, who were fully on the spectrum.
What they forgot was that people who were waiting for their stories to activate tended to hate and resent the people who were living the tales that they were always meant to embody, and that people who’d been averted were afraid of the narrative coming back for a second pass. Basically, the Bureau stacked the deck against anyone who was on the spectrum, and they did it in the interests of keeping us all a little safer. The Bureau meant well, but sometimes I suspected that if the modern government were a fairy tale, the Bureau would have been the villain.
“I didn’t ask you to make sure I remembered my name, I asked you to tell me where you’d taken Henrietta Marchen.” I crossed my arms and glared at him. He was pretty short, and I’m five foot eleven. I barely even had to tilt my head back. “Where is she?”
“Please state your name,” he repeated.
I narrowed my eyes. “Agent Sloane Winters, ATI Management Bureau, official designation five-eleven, Wicked Stepsister, verified as in abeyance. Where is Henrietta Marchen?”
“You’re lying.”
“And you’re a Boy Who Cried Wolf,” I snapped, his impending story suddenly coming into perfect focus. No one knows how to spot a liar better than someone who lives to lie. “Since we’re both stuck here, how about you tell me where my boss is and then go fuck yourself?”
“Please state your name.”
I stared at him.
The way I saw it, I had two choices. I could murder the shit out of this asshole, stuff his body in the nearest recycle bin, and try to find Henry on my own, or I could play along with him and see where it led us. He was with HR. It wasn’t like he couldn’t pull my records. “My name is Amity Green. I’m an agent with the ATI Management Bureau. My name change paperwork is on file with HR, along with the written records explaining why my birth name was no longer safe for me to use. Now where, you incredible asshole, did you take Henrietta Marchen?”
“Stand down, Tom.” The voice was familiar. I turned. Ciara Bloomfield was behind me, her pirate shirt covered by a tailored jacket and her hair hanging loose around her face. The blue streaks were more pronounced than they’d been when she’d come to perform our review. Instead of being confined to her roots, they twisted all through her hair, extending to the tips.
She smiled when she saw me eyeing her hair. “It gets excited when it thinks we’re going to start opening doors that we’re supposed to leave alone. And no, I don’t usually refer to myself in the plural, nor does my hair really have a mind of its own. No more than anyone else’s.”
“Okay, one, go fuck yourself,” I said. “Two, go fuck yourself twice. Three, where the fuck is Henry and what the fuck are you doing here?”
“I’ve always found profanity to be a lot like bacon,” said Ciara. “It works wonders on the flavor of your speech, but it lacks impact when used excessively.”
“I’ll use my foot right up your—”
She cut me off. “I apologize for Tom. He was sent here to stall you, while your boss scrambled to reach me at home. Fortunately for the organization, my husband and I hadn’t left for our cruise yet.” She produced a piece of paper from inside her jacket. “I regret to inform you that your vacation has been canceled.” She produced a second piece of paper, holding both out toward me. “I also regret to inform you that you’re not allowed to kill me, as I am your new temporary field leader.”
“The fuck?” I took the papers from her hand and skimmed them. They seemed to support what she was saying to me. I looked up, eyes narrowed. “What is this shit? Field teams promote from within. You barely know us.”
“Agent Santos is too new, you’re too you, Agent Robinson is ineligible due to his lack of connection to the ATI spectrum, and Agent Davis is taking a medical leave of absence while he cares for his domestic partner.” Ciara’s smile was quick and thin, a razorblade of an expression. “He doesn’t know that part yet. We’ll be explaining it to him when we get to the hospital. Sorry about your vacation. I hope you weren’t planning on heading for Disney World or anything.”
“I have no idea what’s going on right now, but I’m pretty sure I don’t like it.” I swung around to glare at Tom. He flinched. Good. If he could flinch when I looked at him, he could scream when I started hitting him. “Did you know about this? Is that why you kept asking for my name and not telling me where my teammate was? Think carefully before you answer. There will be penalties for answering wrong.”
Tom looked uncomfortable and didn’t say a word.
Jeffrey and I had left the storeroom together, him holding Henry in his arms, me following at what felt like a polite distance, still munching on the apple that had essentially killed her. It wasn’t evidence, not in the strictest sense of the word, and I’d been hungry. Can’t blame a girl for that.
Only it seemed that some people can. Andrew had started shouting as soon as we stepped into the bullpen, and then the deputy director had appeared as if by magic, and Jeffrey and Henry had been whisked away to an emergency vehicle, for transport to the nearest Bureau-approved medical facility. Andrew and Demi had followed in the team’s van, leaving me alone.
No, not totally alone: the man from HR had appeared while I was throwing away the apple core and grabbing my jacket, and our little game of truth or dare had commenced.
“Please don’t blame Tom, Sloane,” said Ciara. “The procedures for handling transfer of authority during an emergency situation were established more than a century ago, and they didn’t leave him much wiggle room. He needed to hold you here, and he needed to prevent you from becoming upset enough that your story would flare.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh my Grimm, you people. Ciara. You read my file before you came to interview us, right? I’m assuming that when they called you and said the shit had hit the fan, they supplied you with another set of files. A thicker set of files, with fewer things redacted. Did you read those?”
“I haven’t had the chance,” she said, somewhat apologetically. “I just got this assignment, and my clearance didn’t allow me to look at the unexpurgated personnel records until I was already on my way over here.”
“Gotcha.” I took a step toward her. “I know the protocol you’re talking about. I wrote the protocol you’re talking about. See, for a long time, there was only one ‘villain’ working for any branch of the Bureau. It’s funny, but they don’t tend to hire much from the darker side of the narrative. Something about the body count being bad for morale.”
“I don’t understand what this has to do with anything,” said Ciara.
“It means I know the protocol inside and out, and it says that in the event that a transfer of power has to occur following the injury or incapacitation of an active team member, all functional members of the team should be given the opportunity to go to the side of their injured colleague.” I crossed my arms. “I wrote it that way when I first drafted the proposal, in 1884. So don’t stand there pretending you followed the rules. It’s not going to win you any points.”
“I didn’t follow the rules,” said Ciara. “I f
ollowed orders. That’s what I do, Sloane. Because if I start breaking orders, even the ones that sound pointless, I’m going to find myself in front of a door with a key in my hand, and then I’m going to be parted from my head.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Who the fuck told you to stall me getting to Henry?”
“I did.” Deputy Director Brewer stepped through the door behind Ciara. He looked tired. I remembered when he’d been a bright young thing, so enthralled by the idea that fairy tales were real—that his beloved girlfriend was a legend—that he hadn’t considered the dangers.
He’d left the Bureau for thirty years after what happened to her. Most people thought the narrative had never laid a finger on him. I knew that wasn’t true, but I also knew he’d been more than punished for what he’d done. He’d loved a happy ever after. He’d lost it all to once upon a time.
“Henry thinks you’re a norm,” I snapped. It was the nastiest thing I could think of to say.
His cheeks reddened. Reminders of Mary always did that to him. Pretty, sweet, guileless Mary, who could still be seen if you stood in front of the right mirror, and if you called her name three times. “Henrietta is occasionally blind to what’s in front of her. She’s spent too much time focused on her own story. That’s part of what makes her an effective team leader: she doesn’t get distracted. But it can mean that if you’re not threatening to destroy the world, she won’t realize there’s anything unusual.”
I transferred my glare fully to him. “Yeah, well. If you don’t tell me why you’re keeping me away from my team, you’re going to find out how threatening I can be.”
“Agent Winters, did you poison the apple you gave to Henrietta Marchen?” Deputy Director Brewer’s face was long and sad, and I could barely see the echoes of the boy I’d known behind his tired eyes. Time is a bitch. Nothing good has ever come of it.
“No,” I said.
“Are you working with Elise?”
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