Armageddon Rules

by J. C. Nelson

  “Marissa, I am an echo, captured by intention of Fairy Godfather two years ago, on the twenty-fourth of August. If it makes it easier, you may refer to me as Grimm as well.”

  “Are you intelligent?” Grimm left a copy of himself. Maybe. An echo? Some form of his power that wasn’t affected by whatever had him frozen.

  The Echo looked over his glasses at me with a stern look. “That’s no sort of question for me. I’m a complete record of the Fairy Godfather’s thoughts while he captured me. In that respect I am smarter than every scientist the human race has ever produced.” He definitely had Grimm’s arrogance.

  “Fine. I’ll call you Echo. Grimm’s his name, and names mean something to me. Tell me about the test.” I glanced over to Rosa, who acted as if she hadn’t heard a single word.

  Echo cleared his throat and waited for me to look back to him. “It’s simple, my dear. Convince me you are not something pretending to be Marissa. I should warn you, the weapon Rosa has is loaded with reaper bullets. You may recall them.”

  I did. I’d used several of them to kill things that weren’t supposed to die. If I got shot by one of those, I hoped it hit me in the head. Otherwise I’d have several agonizing seconds while it devoured me.

  So all I had to do was be me. In theory. “Echo, why did Grimm create you?”

  He paused for a moment, considering my question. “Surprising. This isn’t relevant to your survival, my dear.”

  “Humor me.”

  “After his mirror was broken, the Fairy Godfather considered for the first time that there might come an eventuality when he was not available to handle his business. Indeed, until you killed a fairy, we didn’t think it was possible.” Echo glanced to the handmaiden’s mark.

  “So are you some sort of will?”

  “No, my dear, I am a test.” Echo crossed his arms, looking disturbingly like an actual Grimm.

  I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to figure out what on earth Grimm was thinking when he came up with this scheme. “So how do I convince you I’m me?”

  “Determining that is part of the test.”

  Echo really was a copy of Grimm, with his annoying “I’m always right” and circular logic loops.

  “My name is Marissa Locks. I’ve been your agent for eight years. You called me Goldy Locks, because I do things just right.” I stopped and waited.

  Echo looked up at Rosa and shook his head.

  “My last name was Lambert. My sister’s name is Hope. You fixed her heart.”

  He continued to regard me like a lump of meat. Rosa, on the other hand, had a wicked smile. I hated it when she smiled, because the only thing that really made her happy was ruining someone’s day. I figured the only reason Grimm kept her on was she came with the building.

  “What does it take to get you to understand that I’m me? I have the handmaiden’s mark, for Kingdom’s sake.” I gave Echo the glare that usually got to Grimm.

  Echo rolled his eyes. “If the Black Queen sent someone in your place, she would most certainly bear the mark.”

  And right there, I stopped worrying about the shotgun pointed at my chest. See, Grimm, the real Grimm, always insisted the Black Queen was dead. That the mark on my hand was some form of minor curse that came around every so often. “Echo, is the Black Queen dead?”

  His eyes widened, then the corners of his mouth turned up ever so slightly. “She is not alive. I recommend you don’t waste any more of your questions on this line of inquiry. Fairy Godfather suspected Rosa was somewhat inclined to shoot you regardless of the outcome.”

  “What do you mean?” I sat up and leaned on my desk. “Don’t waste my questions?”

  “I’ll only answer so many of them before I decide that in fact you are a facsimile of Marissa, attempting to determine a way to convince me. That, by the way, was a question.”

  “So help me out. Tell me what I have to do to convince you.” I was careful to avoid phrasing my question in the form of a question. I preferred checkers to sudden-death Jeopardy!

  Echo folded his arms and waited.

  “You don’t have to tell me the answer. Let me know if I’m supposed to ask you something, tell you something, or do something.”

  “Yes,” said Echo.

  Rosa released the safety on her shotgun and walked to the side to line up a better shot at me.

  About then, I realized whatever I was supposed to be doing, I wasn’t. I didn’t have the slightest idea what Grimm’s Echo was looking for to prove myself. I took the briefcase and set it in my lap, weighing my options. Grimm had a set of rules, and all I had to do was figure them out, but I’d never been a “by the rules” girl. So we’d do it my way.

  “All right, Echo. One last question. Is this briefcase bulletproof?” In the moment before he could answer, I shot to my feet, briefcase in hand. The metal top collided with Rosa’s shotgun right as it went off. I pushed the barrel up and away, charging straight into Rosa, knocking her into the wall.

  I’d taken more self-defense courses than I could count, and in the last couple of years I’d had Jess train me on visiting day. Lots of martial arts teach you to use your knees or your fists. I used the briefcase. I smashed it into Rosa’s jaw, then her arm, causing her to drop the shotgun. A second blow across her head sent her reeling. I threw down the briefcase and picked up the shotgun.

  “Now you listen.” I still had one more reaper bullet. The way her gaze flitted to the shotgun told me she knew it too.

  To her credit, Rosa dropped the arm she’d held over her face and looked at me. If you had to die, facing it head-on was good in my book.

  “You ever aim this thing at me again, I’ll have the dwarves grind it up and put it in your feeding tube.” I opened the shotgun and removed the remaining reaper bullet, then threw the empty gun at her. “Get back out there, answer the phone, and get ready to open the office. If you even think about reloading and coming back, I’ll order Mikey to play with you.”

  Rosa stood, leaning heavily on the gun. I’d hit her harder than I realized. If it weren’t for the fact that she could file a workman’s comp claim, I’d have taken a photo for my memory book.

  “My dear,” said Echo, his voice muffled by the briefcase, “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t kill her. She’s your notary public, and you’ll need her to sign the papers.”

  Rosa hobbled over and opened the briefcase. With a click, the lower section unsealed. What I thought was only electronics held a thick raft of papers, and one of Grimm’s favorite fountain pens. Rosa threw a pen at me, flinching when I caught it. “Start signing.”

  “I don’t sign anything without reading.” I turned over the first raft of papers.

  “Then we will be here for several weeks,” said Echo. “These contracts, to put it simply, give you control of the Agency until the Fairy Godfather returns, or you die.”

  “So Grimm wanted me to own the Agency?”

  Echo nodded. “Own is a nebulous word. Fairy Godfather considered you most appropriate to keep the Agency functioning in the event of his demise or incapacitation. His arrangements will put several spell casters on your permanent retainer, and of course, you will have access to all Agency accounts. It was a pleasure not having you killed, Marissa.”

  Rosa hit the Power button, and Echo disappeared. Then she looked over at me and took out an impossibly large stack of papers. “Sign. Please.”

  Fifteen

  IT TOOK NEARLY four hours to finish signing the papers. By that point, writing “Marissa Locks” felt like writing the entirety of a Chinese phone book. I called to arrange backup for Shigeru, selecting an acidic moat monster who could dissolve anything that set foot in the room. How exactly our contractors intended to get it into the hospital was not my problem. Keeping Ari alive was.

  Long after Rosa locked the front door, I wandered the halls of the Agency, poking into offices, checking out storage rooms. It wasn’t as if I was spying. According to what I’d signed, the lease, the accounts, everything b
elonged to me. I checked the office fridge for food, and found only the wheel of cheese that’d been there since my first anniversary with the Agency. No one in their right mind touched the thing. Every person who so much as laid a finger on it died bloody deaths within hours.

  Then I went into Grimm’s office, sat down at his desk, and began to sift through papers. Grimm was never physically at his desk. In fact, we had a scanner that did nothing but slide papers past his mirror. There were the usual receipts. More than a few letters from lawyers threatening to sue, and quite a few thank-you notes. I’m assuming they were thank-you notes, as the writing looked bubbly, and happy, even though I couldn’t read the language.

  I wanted more than anything to talk to Liam, but Liam was hiding in a castle, hopefully at the end of a long line of traps. Odds were, Grimm’s defenses were good. Odds were, the vampire’s assassins would kill anyone who survived traveling through the dungeon. But odds were also good Queen Mihail did her homework. That she’d sent a team wearing asbestos underwear. That the man I loved more than anyone else in this world was in serious danger and might die before he could offer me a ring I already wore.

  I wouldn’t have worried, normally. I could handle anything, with Grimm’s knowledge and a little bit of magical assistance. But Grimm was frozen, and the only thing left was an Echo. And right then I began to wonder. I left his office and went back to my own, where I found the briefcase. When I clicked it on, Echo’s face appeared.

  “Marissa, you have passed the identity test. Thank you for your cooperation, my dear.”

  “Echo, how much do you know?”

  He frowned at me. “We had this conversation. I am a recording of all of Fairy Godfather’s thoughts during the recording process.”

  “Did he think about Ari?” I tapped the pen on my desk nervously, wondering if my idea would work.

  Echo nodded. “The sheer number of things he considered during the two point eight milliseconds where I was captured would astound you. He most certainly considered Princess Arianna.”

  “So if Ari were in a coma, and I needed to keep her safe, how would Grimm do it?” I didn’t know how far Echo’s limits went, but it couldn’t hurt to find out.

  “I do not possess his array of knowledge, Marissa. Only a recording of what he thought about during a remarkably brief time. However, I believe we reason along identical lines. This can hardly be the first time a princess has found herself incapacitated. How were they kept safe before?”

  “Is the gateway to Grimm’s library open?” Grimm had a better selection than the branch library, so long as you didn’t want to read romance and you liked memoirs of people dead for five centuries.

  Echo stared at me, his eyebrows raised, his lips drawn tight. “The secondary closet across from the teleconference room is the current portal. I realize this is beyond my purpose, but I believe Fairy Godfather would advise you to go home and get some sleep. If Princess Arianna is protected for the moment, then judging from my assessment of your condition, you will deal better with this problem once you have rested. Now kindly turn me off and go home.”

  * * *

  AT HOME, I couldn’t sleep. It was the knowledge that Liam was in danger. It was the fear of what might happen to Ari. That Grimm might be truly gone. If he were, it was only a matter of time before another Fairy came looking to move in and set up shop. It was unlikely they’d tolerate competition.

  I stayed up far into the morning reading about princesses, and their total and complete inability to get hurt like a normal person. Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, that Anesthesia chick in Russia. The clock said I only had a couple hours until my alarm went off when I finally figured I’d put enough of the pieces together. I blinked, and the alarm blared. Not time for work. Time to head into Kingdom for my doctor’s appointment.

  If—no, when—I figured out a way out of this revenge mess, I planned on having a lot of makeup sex and not giving birth to a cursed child. I made it into Kingdom before the doctor’s office even opened, and when the elf at the front desk opened for registrations, I marched up and signed my name.

  She read it over, wrinkled her nose, and then read it again. “You’ll have to come back when you have an appointment.”

  “I have one. Made by the Fairy Godfather, a couple of days ago.” Grimm never slept, never forgot, and never forgave.

  The elf sniffed again, wiggling her ears in distress. “I don’t have any record of that, Ms. Locks. If you’d like, I can put you on the normal list. We can see you next November.” I swore my way out of the office and off to work. When, not if, I managed to get Grimm restored, he was going to answer to me.

  Without an appointment to keep, I made it into work early. Of course, no matter how early I got there, Rosa beat me through the door. I once asked Grimm if Rosa might have actually been some sort of appliance that came with the building. At the front door of the office I nodded to her.

  She completely ignored me.

  “Morning, Rosa.”

  She looked over the counter at me like she’d discovered that someone left a bean casserole in the lobby over the weekend. So much for getting more respect. I’d barely made coffee and settled down for the morning paper when the shouting started.

  I ignored it.

  There was no reason to go running off just because people were upset with each other. In fact, I preferred not to intervene until blood transfusions became necessary. The shouting rose to shrieking, then screaming, then chanting. Screaming, fighting, no problem. When people started casting spells in my lobby, I took issue with it.

  I took the paper and my coffee, and went to find out what Rosa wasn’t handling. In the lobby stood two people dressed in long robes. Echo said I’d have hired help with the spells, and these looked to be my enchanters. Then I got a better look at them. Those weren’t long robes. They were bathrobes. I swore under my breath. Why couldn’t Grimm hire real spell slingers?

  “Can I help you?” I set down the coffee and rolled up the paper. I’d dealt with enchanters before, and it was like training a puppy.

  The woman nodded. She was older, probably nearing fifty, and wore glasses so scratched they were milky white. Her long white hair had pinecones and bits of garbage in it. “We’re here to fulfill contract 27-Alpha-323.”

  I looked at the man standing behind her. He looked curiously familiar, and smelled like a garbage truck and a wine bar combined. “You the enchanters Fairy Godfather hired?”

  He kept his eyes on the floor and mumbled something indistinct.

  I looked back at the woman.

  “Not exactly. We’re here to fulfill their contract. See, Grabnar the Great is in jail, and Elinda got bitten by an asp at the post office.”

  I made a mental note to take a closer look at Grimm’s contract to figure out where he’d allowed substitutions. I had an Agency to run, no spell powers of my own, and a couple of enchanters who looked like they’d fallen off the wagon, then been strapped to the wagon wheel and run over repeatedly. “All right. Let me show you to the temp worker’s offices.”

  I waved them on after me.

  “Don’t you want to know our names?” asked the woman.

  “Not really.” I treated my temp workers like I treated my potted plants. Until they’d survived several weeks at the Agency, they didn’t get names or love. When we got to the temp offices, I put them to work. “We’ve had four outbreaks of poodles in the last month. That’s way too many for this time of year. So put your wands together, draw a few pentagrams, and pull an answer out of your hat for where they’re coming from.”

  “We don’t use wands or pentagrams,” said the woman, glaring at me.

  “Or hats,” said the man.

  I nodded. “I don’t care if you do card tricks. I want to know where the poodles are coming from. Rosa can get you anything you need, as long as you don’t need anything. Call me when you have an answer.” The office buzzer went off, meaning in the time it’d taken me to park a couple of enchanters, someone
else arrived.

  I ambled back to the lobby and smiled. Beth sat in a lobby chair, clipboard in hand, filling in her daily application. “Morning, Beth.”

  She smiled at me, a silver ring flashing in her nose as she did. “I was afraid you wouldn’t be here.”

  I shrugged. “Not the first or last time there’ll be a team of assassins dispatched to kill everyone in the office, I expect. It’s like that around here. A lot.”

  Beth blew a single note on the kazoo, and the rat in front of her did cartwheels. “I lived in a crack house for a while, so I’m okay with crazy. I can make rats do anything now!”

  I snorted. “Rats. Teenagers. You aren’t a real piper until you can control something evil. Something awful.”

  Beth caught my tone and locked her eyes on me. She put one hand on her hip and cocked an eyebrow. “Such as?”

  I waved her on, and she followed me to our back storage room. Inside, a six-foot kennel shook and rattled like something from Inferno raged inside it.

  Beth shivered, then clenched her fists and nodded to me.

  With a magician’s flourish, I yanked the blanket off the kennel, revealing the white terror inside. A single white toy poodle, about two feet long at most, with its tail sculpted in a bob cut.

  Its beady eyes focused on Beth as it began to wag its tail, yipping happily and prancing.

  Beth knelt by the cage. “Hey, little girl. What’s a cute little thing like you doing—”

  The poodle rocketed through the air. It slammed into the kennel door, hitting it so hard, the cage lurched forward, smashing Beth in the face.

  Beth began cursing like a longshoreman as she rolled onto her knees and stood up. Blood dribbled from her nose, and above her eye she had the makings of a fine bruise. “What the hell is that thing?”

  “Poodle.” I checked the kennel door to make sure the welds held.

  Beth kicked the cage. “My aunt had a poodle. It didn’t do that. It didn’t look like that.”