Indexing: Reflections (Kindle Serials) (Indexing Series Book 2)

by Seanan McGuire

  The glass stopped spreading. Elise stopped laughing. The glass began to retreat, replaced by soft fabric and, presumably, living flesh. At the last, the glass emerged from his chest and fell to the ground, where it dissolved. I gaped.

  Agent Névé shrugged, looking faintly abashed. “I already belong to somebody else,” he said. “I’m not afraid of glass anymore.”

  Elise screamed. I turned to see Piotr, still in wolf-form, pinning her to her pumpkin throne. He had one massive paw on each of her arms, holding them down so she couldn’t fling any more glass at us, and he was snarling, his muzzle mere inches from her face.

  For a moment, I thought about telling him to go ahead and eat her. It would make things so much easier on all of us if she was gone. Birdie could manipulate stories, but she’d never demonstrated the kind of direct physical power that we’d seen from Elise. Whether it was the breaking and re-forging that had made Elise as strong as she was, or just the fact that she was tapped into a huge, successful story didn’t really matter. We needed her out of the way, and she’d already shown that we had no prison capable of holding her.

  No prison, except for maybe the one that was designed for fairy-tale princesses. “Piotr, don’t kill her,” I said.

  The wolf swung his head around and glared at me. I sighed.

  “I know, I know, she tried to kill Carlos, and that’s bad, but you don’t want to be picking bits of soured Cinderella out of your teeth for the next week. You know how human flesh upsets your digestion.” Piotr was good at controlling his wolf. He let it out to run on private estates, and he ate duck three times a week. But there had been incidents, always under circumstances where a police officer would have been able to plead “justified shooting.” It was just that Piotr’s justified shootings ended with his belly full of people who didn’t know when to surrender.

  “See, first Ciara negotiates with a hedge, and then you negotiate with a wolf,” said Andy. He sounded almost philosophical. “I love this job.”

  “Best one in the world,” said Ciara.

  I walked toward the thorn wall, shrugging out of my jacket and wrapping it around my hand as I searched for a suitable thorn. Finally, I found what I wanted: a jagged spike easily a foot long, with a wickedly pointed tip. It took a little effort to break it free from the branch, but I persevered, wiggling it back and forth until it came loose in my hand. Then I turned and looked calmly at Elise.

  Her eyes widened when she saw the thorn in my hand. “No!” she said, and began struggling against Piotr. His head snapped around, his nose almost brushing hers, and he snarled again. This time, it didn’t seem to have much of an effect. She kept struggling, fighting to break free of his bulk. “No, no, no, you can’t,” she said. “You wouldn’t. You’re the good guys.”

  “People forget law enforcement is a narrative too,” I said. “Bring her down here, Piotr. You don’t need to be gentle about it.”

  Piotr stepped off Elise. She had time to push herself onto her elbows, a look of elation spreading across her face, before the great wolf grabbed the back of her neck in his powerful jaws and leapt down to the ground. She howled like she was a wolf herself as they descended, and there was a horrible crunching sound when her right wrist struck the earth. Piotr let her go. She didn’t try to stand, just rolled onto her side and cradled her broken wrist against her chest.

  “I think you can be a human again, Agent Remus,” I said. “She’s not going to run. She’s lost.”

  “I won’t tell you anything,” gasped Elise, between wails.

  “Why?” I asked. “Because you’re afraid of Adrianna?”

  Elise froze, her eyes going wide in her pain-pale face.

  “We know,” said Ciara, stepping up next to me. “We know everything.”

  Not everything, but there was no point in contradicting her. Not here, not now. Piotr stepped up on my other side, back in his funereal suit. The only sign of what he’d just done was his hair, which was disarrayed and rumpled in a way that was unusual for the normally meticulous field team leader. Andy, Demi, and Carlos hung back. Demi wasn’t playing anymore, but her flute was held at the ready, just in case Elise forced her hand.

  “You thought there’d just be three people left for you to take out, didn’t you?” I asked. “Demi’s dangerous, but Birdie got around her once before, so she’s not going to seem like as much of a threat to you. You’re wrong, by the way. Demi may be the scariest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Thanks, I think,” said Demi.

  “No one’s sure what Ciara’s capable of, and there’s this amazing tendency to forget that Andy carries a gun,” I continued, crouching down in front of Elise. Her eyes tracked the thorn in my hands the whole time. She hadn’t recognized me. Maybe that shouldn’t have been such a surprise. My own team hadn’t realized that Adrianna was wearing my face, after all.

  Still. We had her now. There was no reason to hide. I raised the thorn until it was level with my face, wiggling it a little to make sure I had her attention. Then I smiled my ghastly red smile, and said, “Hello, Elise. Did Adrianna tell you she killed me? Because she was lying, if she did. All she managed to do was piss me off.”

  She looked confused for a moment. Then her eyes widened in slow, terrible realization.

  “No, that’s not possible,” she said. “Adrianna took your body. Hers is gone. Decades gone. There’s no way you could have put it on.”

  “Bodies are sort of like dresses for Snow Whites, and it turns out we all wear the same size,” I said. “I want my body back. That’s the only thing keeping me from slamming this thorn into your heart. What did you tip it with? Glass? Poison? Or maybe just a nice long nap? That’s the traditional thing, with thorns.”

  “I don’t know I don’t know Birdie said you’d be expecting glass, so she gave it to me in a vial and told me to pour it on the ground,” moaned Elise. She tried to scramble backward, and stopped as her back ran into the solid wall of Andy’s legs. We had her surrounded. No matter what she did from here, she’d be doing it as our prisoner. “Please, you have to believe me. I’m not a bad guy. I’m not a villain. I’m a princess.”

  “It’s amazing how people think being born royalty means being born good,” I said. “I’m a princess too, Elise, and so is Adrianna. She’s not good. Currently, I’m not feeling too good either, since she stole my body, tried to kill my boyfriend, and abducted Sloane. So maybe you should lay off the claims to the throne and start telling us where we can find her.”

  “You don’t understand,” said Elise. She looked wildly around, stopping only when she realized she had no supporters. She turned back to me and said, in a pleading voice, “If I don’t do what she tells me to do, she’ll tell Mother Goose to push me back into the story I came from. Please. Don’t let her send me back there.”

  “You murdered a whole lot of people trying to turn yourself into a Cinderella, and you’ve murdered even more since you succeeded,” I said. Calmly, I reached out with my free hand, took hold of her broken wrist, and squeezed. Over her screams, I said, “Why would I help you get anything you want? You are exactly as useful to me as the information you give me.”

  “Henry . . .” said Andy, and stopped. I glanced at him. He shook his head. “Never mind. You do whatever you need to do to get her to tell you where that woman took Sloane. All of us will back your play.”

  “Whatever it is,” said Ciara. She looked at Elise, calm as anything, and said, “HR is on your side. We understand that sometimes recalcitrant stories refuse to respond to modern methods.”

  I released Elise’s wrist. “I’m not going to torture you,” I said. “That would be pointless. Anything you said would be suspect, because you’d be trying to make us stop. Besides, we’re better than that. That’s why we’re the good guys. Because we don’t stoop to torture.”

  “Oh, thank God,” whispered Elise.

  “Instead, I’m going to make you an offer. Tell us where Adrianna took Sloane, and we’ll take you into custody, ret
urn you to Childe Prison, and keep you locked up for the rest of your life, far outside her reach. Don’t tell us, and we let you find out what kind of potion she gave you to put on these thorns.” I waved the thorn I was holding under her nose, watching as her eyes tracked the motion. “Tick tock, Elise. It’s almost midnight, and this is the story you wanted. That means you were always living your life on a deadline.”

  “I was supposed to get the prince,” she said. Her voice was still barely above a whisper, still filled with confusion and regret, but it was weakening. She was going to break.

  Thank Grimm. I wasn’t sure I could have stabbed her with the thorn, even after what Adrianna had done to Jeff. Elise hadn’t been the one to pull the trigger, and we were supposed to be the good guys. I was grateful that I had no such qualms about Adrianna. If I caught up to her, I would do whatever it took to make sure that she didn’t hurt anyone else. Including killing her, if that was the only way.

  Even if it meant killing my own body.

  The realization was chilling. Killing Adrianna would be a form of suicide, at least right now: the core of who I was would survive, but the woman I’d been would be lost forever. What’s worse, the body I was wearing had a family. The hospital she’d been in before I woke up wasn’t cheap, and someone had to have been paying the bills. They’d find me eventually, and I would have to find a way to explain that I wasn’t her, not really, and that I hadn’t displaced her, because she’d already been gone, happily existing in a place after life but before death, where the snow never melted and the princes couldn’t touch her. That wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have. If I killed Adrianna, I might not have a choice.

  “You have to go to the ball to get the prince, you know,” said Ciara. “This isn’t a ball. This isn’t even a ballroom. This is a nasty-ass hedge maze in a residential neighborhood that probably violates six or seven zoning rules.”

  Andy gave her a flat look. “Your priorities are bizarre,” he said.

  Ciara sniffed, and said nothing.

  I waved the thorn at Elise one more time. “Tick tock, Cinderella. Do you turn back into a pumpkin, or do you find a way to extend your story for another day? I’m out of patience, and you’re out of time.”

  “Childe,” she said.

  I frowned. “What?”

  “The Bureau used what Mother Goose called a ‘beanstalk fold’ to create Childe Prison and anchor it to this world, without letting it be a part of this world,” said Elise. She was talking fast now, like her first word had been the cork holding the rest of them inside. That was fine by me. The faster we could get this finished, the faster we could go after Adrianna. “There’s a big beanstalk there. You just can’t see it.”

  “Agent Winters helped plant it, according to her file,” said Ciara. “No one who wasn’t there or in a supervisory role over one of the architects was supposed to know.”

  “I didn’t know,” I said. Ciara’s HR clearance must have given her access to material about my team that even I didn’t have. I didn’t like that.

  “I’m sorry,” said Ciara—and to her credit, she did look faintly abashed. “It’s why fairy-tale physics take precedence there. You’re halfway out of the real world and halfway into a storybook.”

  “So where are the roots?” I turned back to Elise.

  “Nowhere,” she said. “They’re in a place that isn’t a place. But Adrianna, she found a way to pull us further down the fold. She’s there. They’re all there. In the fold.”

  “She built a secret lair under the maximum security prison?” I stared at Elise for a moment. She shied back, her eyes still on the thorn.

  “She’s not lying,” said Agent Névé.

  “So what do we do now?” asked Piotr.

  There was only one answer. “You have a prisoner who needs to be delivered to Childe Prison,” I said. “You’re a field team leader. That means you have access. The rest of us will come with you, find our way to the beanstalk, and climb down to where Adrianna is hiding.”

  “Oh, that sounds like a piece of cake,” said Andy. “Let’s go.”

  I tossed the thorn—and my jacket—aside as I stood. “Yes,” I said. “Let’s.”

  # # #

  In all my trips to Childe Prison, I’d always been the one behind the wheel. Making the journey as a passenger was different, and unsettling. I clung to the grip above my seat, wincing every time we hit a bump. Demi and Andy were crammed next to me; Piotr was driving, with Ciara in the passenger seat, while Agent Névé sat in the far back with Elise. She’d stopped talking when we crammed her into the van, perhaps realizing it was really over: she had really lost. Between Demi and Agent Névé, her glass-based tricks weren’t going to do her any good, and she didn’t have any other weapons. We had her. No matter what else happened today, we had her.

  “Henry? You okay?” Andy sounded concerned.

  I swallowed, trying to force my stomach down out of my throat. “Turns out tolerance for high speeds is a function of the flesh and not the mind. I feel like I’m going to hurl.”

  “Roll down the window if you’re going to vomit in my car,” snapped Piotr.

  “Sloane would be laughing her ass off right about now,” said Andy. “I just want to put that out there. This would be, bar none, the funniest thing she had ever seen.”

  “Let’s hope she gets the chance,” I said, and closed my eyes. It didn’t help. The car was still moving at a ridiculous speed, jerking my body back and forth with every turn, and refusing to look at the road didn’t mean that it wasn’t there—

  —until, of course, it wasn’t. I felt, rather than saw, Piotr steer the vehicle off Dead Man’s Curve, sending us hurtling off into empty air. I bore down harder on the grip, grinding my teeth to stop myself from screaming. It would damage my authority with my team. It would be showing weakness in front of the prisoner. Worst of all, I was fairly sure that once I started, I wouldn’t be able to stop.

  We slammed into the parking lot of Childe Prison like a brick slotting into a wall, rattling the entire vehicle. I opened my eyes and let go of the grip, reaching for the door handle in the same gesture. We needed to move. We needed to find Sloane, and we needed to do it fast. If we could get my body back at the same time, all the better. I was not looking forward to making the journey home in this borrowed skin.

  “We’ll deliver the prisoner,” said Piotr. “Given your current lack of credentials, Agent Marchen, that might be the best way to avoid awkward questions.”

  “I understand,” I said, and opened the door, sliding out onto the blacktop. Then I stopped, staring blankly at the gray stone building in front of me. It was so drab. Why, the people who lived there must have very small, sad lives, trapped in a place with no joy in its construction. I could make them feel better, I was sure. A few nice pies and maybe some new curtains for all those windows and they’d find their inner joy in just a heartbeat!

  “Henry?” Andy sounded cautious, like he was afraid of my response. “Boss, are you all right?”

  “Oh, I’m fine,” I said, smiling as I turned to face him. “I’m finer than fine, if that’s a thing that you can be. This place needs a lot of tender loving care, don’t you think? A woman’s touch is just the thing to make any man’s fortress into a proper castle.”

  “She doesn’t have her countercharm anymore,” whispered Demi, sounding horrified. “It was with her body. That’s how Adrianna could come so close to this place and not get all fuzzy and weird. She had the charm.”

  “And Henry doesn’t,” said Ciara. “Aw, hell.”

  “So what do we do?” asked Andy.

  “You turn that frown upside-down, mister,” I said, smiling brightly. “I’m sure we can find you a princess to keep you warm and make you happy. What about her?” I pointed to Elise. “She’s lovely, isn’t she?”

  “I think I get in trouble if I stuff the boss in the trunk,” said Andy, sounding alarmed. “A little help here?”

  “Do not let me go back to the real wo
rld, do you understand?” said Ciara, beginning to dig through her purse. “I may beg. I may command. But don’t let me do it, no matter what I threaten or promise. It’s not safe.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Andy.

  “Ciara . . . ?” said Agent Névé. He seemed to understand what she was doing.

  I didn’t. Not until she slid out of the car, smiled at me, and said, “You dropped this.” She held out her hand, and I automatically took what she was offering me: a crystal spire that glowed from within with a bright, oddly colorless light.

  The overlay of innocent, eager-to-please princess dropped away, and I was myself again—myself in someone else’s body, but still, myself. I didn’t want to cook. I didn’t want to clean. I wanted to punch Adrianna in the face until my knuckles bled, and forget the part where the face belonged to me. I could pay for any dental work my body needed after I got it back. I gasped. I couldn’t help myself.

  “I hate this case,” I muttered.

  Ciara blinked at me, looking confused. Then she turned, still smiling, to Piotr. “Can you take me home, please? This isn’t my team, and it isn’t my prisoner, and my husband expects me before seven. It’s a little agreement we have.”

  “What, so you can open the forbidden door and get yourself chopped into firewood? I’m sorry, Agent Bloomfield, but that’s not going to happen today. Maybe you can cajole your husband into homicide later. Today, you’re going to sit in a nice warm office and do paperwork.” Piotr got out of the car. “I’ll take Elise in and be right back. Agent Névé can stay here to make sure Agent Bloomfield keeps out of trouble.”

  “Actually, I want him,” I said, startling both Piotr and Agent Névé, who was in the process of hauling Elise out of the car. Both of them turned to look at me. I shook my head. “Your wolf is close to the surface right now, Piotr. Adrianna is a fully active Snow White in a world that obeys fairy-tale logic. You’ll be her slave in a second.”