“If you were really Henrietta Marchen, you’d know he hates it when people treat stories as interchangeable just because they have the same tale type,” said Piotr. “Not all Snow White archetypes are created equal.”
“True,” I said. “For example, this one is running out of patience. Please. Take me to the man who can actually help me. You can snark at me later. You and Sloane can tag-team me for all that I care. I need to get to my people.”
Piotr’s usual expression of vague superiority wavered, replaced by uncertainty. “I’m not saying I believe you just yet. But I might be starting to.”
“Good enough for me.” If I could convince Piotr, who lived his life by the book, that I was who I said I was, I could convince anybody.
We walked down the hall toward the deputy director’s office. Heads poked out of doors as we passed. News travels fast in an office like ours, and everyone wants to see the latest twist in the tale. A stranger with Snow White coloration showing up and claiming to be an established agent was definitely new. I tried not to glare at them. It wasn’t their fault they were hungry for novelty.
Deputy Director Brewer’s door was open. Piotr leaned past me to knock on the doorframe. “Sir, she’s here.”
The deputy director looked up. Like Piotr, he looked me up and down before he spoke. “Agent Remus, Agent Névé, thank you both. You are excused. Miss, please come in.”
“I have a name, you know,” I said, pulling the door shut behind me as I stepped into the office. The doorknob felt too high in relation to my hand, when really, it was exactly where it needed to be for someone of my new height. The world was out of kilter, and I didn’t like it.
Deputy Director Brewer looked at me calmly. “Not until you’ve proven that you deserve it. Unless you have something else you’d like to be called?”
I knew him. He already had people calling the local hospitals and checking for missing coma patients who fit my description. Either he hadn’t called the right one or they hadn’t noticed my absence yet. It didn’t matter. Eventually, he’d find someone who knew this body’s name, a family member or friend, and they would have questions I couldn’t answer.
“I don’t know this body’s name, and even if I did, it would be describing the flesh, not the person inside it,” I said. “My name is Henrietta. Most people call me Henry. I need help. I need to find my team.”
“I’ve been working with the Bureau for a long time, miss. I’ve seen a lot of things that people might consider unlikely, even impossible. Lots of white-skinned girls with red lips and wild stories have passed through those doors. But I have to say, this is a first for me.” He still looked so calm. I hated him for that, even as I admired his restraint. “Assuming for a moment that I was willing to believe you might be Henrietta Marchen, and that I was willing to take my belief a step further, and say that someone else was currently occupying your original body . . . how? This strains credulity, even for me.”
“Mirrors,” I said. He seemed to flinch. I narrowed my eyes. Interesting.
When he didn’t say anything, I continued.
“The Snow White story involves a lot of glass, and a lot of reflective surfaces. When a seven-oh-nine goes into her coma, she winds up inside the mirrors.” That wasn’t strictly true, but it was close enough to cover the basics, and I didn’t want to tell him about the whiteout wood. The Snow Whites who lived there had kept their slice of the monomyth secret for centuries. I was a loyal agent of the ATI Management Bureau. I was also a Snow White, and I owed it to my involuntary sisters to protect what little peace they had left. “It turns out some of those past stories are still active. When I lost consciousness, I was ambushed by a Snow White who’d been looking for an opportunity to get out of the glass. By the time I recovered, my body was gone.”
“So what, you did the same to another woman? You stole a body? Two wrongs don’t make a right, miss. If you were truly a Bureau agent, you would know that.”
“Two wrongs don’t make a right, but not all Snow White figures want to wake up,” I said. “The mirrors led me to this body because its owner wasn’t interested in regaining consciousness. We should be looking at our location protocols, sir. I woke up at a private hospital, inside city limits.” Inwardly, I winced at giving him any information he could use to identify my current form. I had to do it. I had to give him whatever he needed to believe that I was really myself, and not some imposter.
“Why didn’t the woman you claim stole your body take one of the unused ones, if it was that simple? It seems like stealing a body is a lot of trouble to go to, if there are bodies just lying around, waiting to be claimed.”
I frowned. “I already told you who took my body. Adrianna. You have files on her, I know you do, because I’ve seen them. She’s a mass-murderer. She can’t be trusted. And right now, she’s wearing my face and targeting my team. Every minute I spend trying to convince you who I am is a minute where I’m not tracking her down and stopping her. You’re my boss, sir, whether you’re currently acknowledging my identity or not. That isn’t going to earn you a scrap of forgiveness from me if she hurts my people because you kept me here longer than you should have.”
“You’re not answering my question.”
“She took my body because this,” I gestured around me, “is what she wanted! She wanted to be inside the Bureau, she wanted access to my team. Demi is powerful as all hell. Jeff is more important than even he realizes. Andy may not be connected to the narrative, but losing him would hurt us incalculably. And Sloane . . .” I trailed off, unsure how to continue without revealing secrets that it wasn’t my place to share. Secrets even Sloane didn’t know I knew.
Sloane had been with the Bureau since its inception—since before its inception. She had seen the stories shift and change for centuries. She was a good agent. She was a good friend. She could be an amazing weapon, if she was aimed correctly.
“You know a great deal about this team, miss,” said the deputy director.
I glared at him. “I’d better. I’ve been leading them for quite some time.”
“So you seriously expect me to believe you passed through a mirror, and as a consequence, Adrianna—who has been dead for a long time; not in a glass coffin, not sleeping, deceased—was able to seize your body, which she is now using to infiltrate the Bureau.” Deputy Director Brewer settled in his seat. “I’m sorry, but this story is a little difficult to believe.”
I sat up a little straighter. “The mirror,” I said.
Deputy Director Brewer frowned. “Excuse me?”
“This whole story hinges on my having passed through a mirror,” I said. “If you believed that, would you believe I am who I say I am?”
His frown deepened. “I make no promises, but I might be more inclined to grant credence to your words.”
“Did you know we have a woman inside the mirror in the women’s locker room?”
The change in him was immediate. His face went white as his shoulders sank, eyes widening to almost comic proportions. His mouth moved for a moment, silently, before he managed to say, “What?”
“A woman. Inside the mirror. Maybe she’s in more than just the one—I don’t know, I never saw her before today, maybe because I’d never traveled through a mirror before. She said to tell you Mary says hello.”
The deputy director paled further. “What did she look like?” he asked.
“Pale. Dark blonde hair, brown eyes. Pretty. She was dressed like a flashback to the nineteen seventies. If you asked me to identify her story, I’d need more information, but I’d be willing to wager a guess that it started sometime between seventy-seven and eighty-two.”
“Why such a precise range?” His voice was virtually a whisper. This seemed to be hurting him. I just didn’t know why.
“Her shoes,” I said. “The rest of the outfit looked like she’d been wearing it for a few years—worn seams, a little mending. The sort of thing you wear because you love it. But she was wearing sturdy-looking sneak
ers, and they were newer than the rest of it. Means she can’t have had them for that long.”
“Was there anything else that stood out about her? Anything at all?”
Given how upset he seemed to be by her existence, I didn’t want to tell him about the blood. But my team needed me, and I owed nothing to the strange woman in the mirror. “She was sad. She was crying when I saw her, but not tears. Blood. She was crying blood.”
He slumped, staring at me. Then he asked, in a rough voice, “Did Sloane tell you about Mary? Is that what this is? Did she say ‘if you ever need to get something out of him, just bring up the girl in the mirror’?”
“No, sir.” I shook my head. “Sloane doesn’t like to talk about her past. Or her present. Or much of anything that’s not available on eBay. She’s careful that way. I’d never even heard a rumor.” But that wasn’t quite true, was it? There were always rumors. I just hadn’t given them any credence or seen any value in trying to follow up on them. They’d seemed harmless, the sort of thing that would inevitably spring up around a building filled with people who fought fairy tales for a living.
Deputy Director Brewer must have read that afterthought on my face. He actually laughed, dropping his forehead into his hand. “Dear God,” he said. “You know, when they told me the Bureau was going into the business of foster care, I thought they’d lost their minds. We’re not equipped to raise children, I said. We’re barely equipped to keep adults among the living. And look at you, you and your brother. You’re both so comfortable living in stories that it never occurs to you that something doesn’t make sense. You never investigated because it was never dangerous.”
“Sir?” I said.
“Her name is Mary. She used to be an agent in this same Bureau. She was the one who brought me here, thirty years ago.” The deputy director sat up straight, looking at me. “She was a new tale type, they said. Something to research and learn how to use. And then one day the mirror swallowed her whole, and I haven’t seen her since.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, sir,” I said.
“If you passed through a mirror to get here, as you keep insisting, it makes sense that you would have seen Mary.” He looked at me assessingly. “You have my attention.”
“I don’t want your attention. I want your authorization to go back into the field and save my people from a mass-murderess who stole my body.” I scowled. “All this ‘prove yourself’ bullshit is getting old, sir. I can tell you anything you want to know about my past, which should prove I’m myself. I can go out on the back lawn and trade secrets with the squirrels, which should prove I’m a Snow White. But if you don’t want to believe me, you’re not going to. I don’t see where there’s anything I can do about that.”
“So what are you going to do?” asked Deputy Director Brewer.
I pushed my chair back and stood. “If you’re not going to help me, I’m going to help myself. Thanks for the shoes. They’ll make marching into hell a lot easier.” I turned and started for the door.
The deputy director was silent as I crossed the room. When I reached for the doorknob, he said, “Agent Marchen, do you think you can drive in your current condition?”
It took me an instant to realize that by my “current condition,” he meant the fact that I was dealing with the cognitive dissonance of being in a body that wasn’t my own. “I’m not sure,” I said, turning back to him. “I was going to give it a try.”
“I’d rather you not get yourself killed when we don’t even know the name of that body you’re in,” he said. “I’m sending Agents Remus and Névé with you to your team’s last known location. They left this morning to respond to a five-four-five-B, and they haven’t checked in recently.”
I wanted to yell at him for wasting my time when my team was radio silent with a murderess in their midst. All I did was nod tightly and say, “Yes, sir. Thank you. My badge and gun . . . ?”
“Your badge is with your body; I don’t have it to give,” he said. “I’ll issue you a provisional shield for now. As for your gun, I feel like the same difficulties you would have with driving will apply to marksmanship. I’ll give you a Taser. You can still incapacitate your body if you catch up to it, but you’re less likely to kill someone by mistake.”
Meaning I was less likely to kill myself and strand my consciousness in another Snow White’s skin. “Fine,” I said. “Anything that gets me back into the field.”
“Understood. And Agent Marchen?”
Here came the catch. There was always a catch. “Yes, sir?”
“I’m going to want to talk to you about Mary when this is all over.”
Naturally. “Yes, sir,” I said, and opened the door. I had my identity, if not my body, back. Now it was time to get down to business.
# # #
Piotr drove, leaving Agent Névé to pack himself into the back seat and look nervously at anything but the rearview mirror. Interesting. I had no such limitations. I watched him for a few blocks before I said, “So what’s your story?”
He jumped, eyes darting instinctively toward the mirror before he flinched away and went back to looking out the window. “Ma’am?”
“HR usually keeps their people, since training you is a nightmare. What made them release you to the field?”
“My story was useful for personnel evaluations, but when Agent Bloomfield was put on assignment to the field office, she asked if I could come with her for logistical support,” he said. “There was no room on her team. I got assigned to Agent Remus.”
“And Agent Remus is smart enough to recognize someone whose story has been pushed to the point of breaking,” said Piotr. “They were using mirrors to have Carlos evaluate their people without making direct eye contact. That’s not healthy for him. When I threatened to call HR on HR, they said I could keep him for as long as he was needed.”
Unhealthy mirrors . . . “Are you from a Snow Queen scenario?” I asked.
Agent Névé’s big head nodded. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I can tell truth from lies when I hear them spoken, but if you give me a mirror, I can see all your worst secrets in your reflection. It hurts. I don’t like it.”
“If he does it long enough, he stops seeing anything but your worst secrets,” said Piotr grimly. He sounded personally offended, as if the things that had been done to Carlos before he was a part of Piotr’s team had been an affront to Piotr himself. That sort of loyalty wasn’t uncommon within the Bureau. It was still refreshing after what I’d been through. “He lived in a world peopled with rotting corpses pretending to be his friends, and then they had the gall to pretend not to know why he was unhappy.”
“It wasn’t that bad, Piotr,” protested Agent Névé.
“If I could tell truth from lies, would I believe you?” asked Piotr. “They have other human lie-detectors. They were torturing you.”
Agent Névé was silent.
I settled deeper in my seat. Snow Queens were nasty, destructive things, and they left long-term effects that most people didn’t really think about. The Kay in the story—the child the Snow Queen inexplicably abducted, driven by the narrative even if she’d never wanted to have children—would be saved from the fragment of mirror caught in his eye. That was the role of the Gerda in the story, the little girl who got the chance to play heroine and go up against a villain who was more natural disaster than actual antagonist. But all the other children who had fragments of the Snow Queen’s mirror in their eyes, they just had to live with it. No one ever came to save them; they were outside the scope of the central narrative.
Sometimes the mirror was an experimental drug, or a foster parent who enjoyed practicing a twisted form of home lobotomy. But none of those children ever got to put the past behind them.
We rode in silence for a while before Piotr asked, “So Henry, what’s the plan here? Are you just going to charge in and hope they believe you when you start telling them you’re the real deal?”
“You’re pretty well accepted as unimpeac
hably honest, and you’re backing me,” I said. “Agent Névé is from HR, which means Ciara will know he’s trustworthy. That should give me enough of a platform to start casting doubt on Adrianna’s story. I don’t care how long she’s been watching me. They have to know that something’s wrong.”
Didn’t they? There was no possible way she could be a better version of me than I was. I was the real thing, and she was just a ghost who refused to stay dead. Andy and Sloane would believe me. Jeff would believe me.
He had to.
“What if they don’t want to listen to you?” asked Piotr. “I’ve seen this woman in the office since ‘you’ woke up, and she’s believable. I didn’t realize anything was different about her.”
“Nothing, really?” I gave him a sidelong look. “Nothing at all?”
He paused before admitting, in a slightly embarrassed tone, “She seemed a little more relaxed than I remembered you being, like she’d finally pulled the stick out of her ass. I thought maybe being in a coma and being woken up by true love’s kiss had left you in a better position to deal with your own shit.”
“But she wasn’t woken up by true love’s kiss,” said Agent Névé, before I could squawk. “I was talking to Ciara about it. Agent Marchen’s boyfriend kissed her, and she didn’t wake up. Not for quite some time. A lot of people have been waiting for the breakup, honestly.”
“That’s stupid,” I said. “I don’t know whether what Jeff and I have is true love, and I don’t care. I like him. He likes me. He makes me feel safe. Why should I require ‘true love’ on top of all that?”
“We live in a fairy-tale world, Marchen. If we’re going to suffer the downsides, we might as well hold out for the good parts.” Piotr turned down a broad, tree lined street. It was the sort of idyllic-looking place where nothing ever seemed to go wrong, until it went wrong to a catastrophic degree.
That hint of catastrophe was borne out by the police cars parked on the street in front of a large, white-fronted McMansion. My team’s SUV was in the driveway, nestled in next to an ambulance—and two of the people I was looking for. Andy and Demi were standing a few feet from the SUV, their heads close together in the way of people who didn’t want to be overheard.
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