Wish Bound (A Grimm Agency Novel Book 3) Page 14

  “Whether she does so with my daughter’s blessing or only as her unwilling pawn, the end is the same. I have no doubt Isolde means to keep the court divided long enough to settle other accounts or unified under her loyal servant.”

  I counted off on my fingers. “Okay, so the kings are out of play, the queens are busy. What next?”

  “She kills any prince foolish enough to be found and destroys Kingdom’s army, lest it be mobilized against her.” Grimm turned toward Wyatt. “She’s already had five princes killed, and no doubt will move against more soon.”

  “I have no interest in Kingdom politics.” Wyatt’s voice wavered in fear.

  “Given your family’s history, she won’t care. Prince Edward Pendlebrook is a name that she will never forget or forgive. Your ancestor helped me end my daughter’s reign of terror.”

  Grimm looked to Liam. “I regret to ask you this, Mr. Stone, but it is essential that whoever is killing these princes does not do away with all of them. I once arranged for you to guard a court of vampires. Now I ask you to guard a single prince.”

  Ari put her hand over Wyatt’s. “I can protect him just fine.”

  “You are needed elsewhere. I need to focus on completing your training. Mr. Stone—”

  “Is staying with Marissa.” Liam’s statement trailed off into a growl.

  Grimm shook his head. “Not where I’m asking her to go.” He looked over to me. “My daughter cannot kill you without endangering herself. Were she to release you, she would be open to my full wrath. I ask that you return to her and attempt to find out how she is killing princes. Her arrogance may be her downfall.”

  Liam leaped to his feet, his face red. “Or you could just give her what she wants. Have you thought about that? How about you get off your lazy ass and fix this instead of sending everyone else to do your dirty work?”

  Grimm looked down at the table. “I have told you that fairies cannot approach each other. That their powers repel. There is, however, a way. I can change myself so that we attract. In essence, we will be irreversibly drawn together in the equivalent of a magical supernova.”

  Liam’s grip on me tightened further. “Won’t that hurt Marissa?”

  “No, sir,” said Grimm. “As long as the handmaiden’s bond is broken, I believe she will survive. When Marissa is free of my daughter, I will end this myself.”

  We sat in stunned silence, all of us waiting for someone else to speak. I finally found my tongue, hanging out of my mouth. “And you die.”

  “In a manner of speaking. The resulting entity, given a few billion years, will coalesce into a new fairy. So you see, Mr. Stone, I do intend to do my part.”

  Liam stayed standing, stayed focused on Grimm. “And how exactly do we get her free? Did any of the ideas I came up with from the doorman work?”

  “You might say so,” said Grimm. “Your visit did give me the key to a possible solution.”

  “Me.” Ari sat up, her shoulders back, her mouth set in a straight line. “There is no High Queen. So I challenge my mother, and everyone else, to a duel. When I win, I become High Queen and order the doorman to strip Isolde of her title the same way he did Irina Mihail. That breaks the handmaiden’s bond.”

  Mrs. Pendlebrook looked like she’d been slapped. She took off her wire-frame bifocals and studied Ari. “Arianna, while your magic is impressive, I do not believe you are up to the task of taking on every other seal bearer and hired hag in the court.”

  “I will be. Grimm is going to teach me Battle Magic.” The ease with which Ari spoke of magic designed to wound and kill made something inside me quiver with fear, and the darkest part of me tremble with excitement.

  Grimm’s face clouded over with worry. “For four hundred years I have not taught an apprentice. I can train Arianna in magic no queen of this age has faced.” He glanced over to Ari. “But there will be a cost, princess.”

  “I’ll take out a mortgage on the house.”

  “Young lady, though you bear the scars of Wild Magic, you are not evil. The sort of spells I will teach you are not the tools of defense. They are designed to rend and maim, to kill and make an example of your victims. To use them willingly against another person will stain you in a way I cannot change.” Grimm’s tone shifted to one I’d never heard, cold and dark, calculating. “Even binding the magic requires sacrifice in a ritual so foul it cannot be spoken of.”

  Ari closed her eyes and clenched her fists. “I’ll do what it takes.”

  “No.” I slammed the binder of menus we used for long nights down on the table, causing Ari to crackle with lightning. “I won’t let you do something like that to yourself. Not for me.”

  “You can’t stop me.”

  “Consider your choice, princess.” Grimm’s use of Arianna’s title always infuriated her. “Once Isolde is dead, the other queens will unite against you at the first opportunity. And if you flee, you will be forever an outcast, reduced to hiding in a hovel lest some prince decide to slay you as a weekend hobby.”

  Mrs. Pendlebrook raised her hand, looking to each of us to make sure we acknowledged her. “Arianna will always be welcome in my home. If my reasons for taking the throne were so noble, perhaps my Charles would be alive today. Fairy Godfather, can you adapt the wards on my house to protect her?”

  My frustration built up like a wave inside me. “You aren’t listening. I’m not some damsel in distress, in need of a prince to rescue me. I’ve been in worse situations before. I’ll handle this.”

  Liam spun on me, his face twisted in anger. “What is wrong with you? We are trying to make sure you survive.”

  I reached out to put my hand on him. “And I am trying to make sure surviving is something I can live with.”

  Liam kicked his chair back into the wall and stormed out, smoke pouring from his mouth and nose. I sat, unsure why everyone stared at me. Finally Grimm spoke. “Go after him. He’s taking the elevator to the roof.”

  “No rituals.” I spoke to Grimm, but locked gazes with Ari until she looked away. Then I ran for the stairs, praying that a decade of cardio could get me to the roof faster than the balky steel death traps building management called elevators.

  I hit the roof escape door right as the elevator chimed, and grabbed Liam the moment the doors opened. He was literally steaming as his body temperature rose to the point of transformation. “Stay. Don’t go flying off.” We’d fought on occasion. It was the only thing that gave his dragon curse enough gumption to actually use the wings.

  Liam crossed his arms as he stared. “When you rescued that baby last month, did you blame the mother for setting her down in a patch of flowers full of pixies?”

  That wasn’t the question I expected of him. “No.”

  “And the couple who had that talking koi in the pond, did they do something wrong?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Liam put his hands on either side of my face, callused hands from hours spent in his studio, swinging hammers. “Every day, every week, every month of the year you’re out solving someone’s problem or saving someone from mistakes. So why can’t you accept that we might want to save you?”

  I couldn’t answer. I didn’t have words.

  “That I might want to save you?” The pain in his voice, the fear, found a partner in my heart.

  “I’ve never been the type to be rescued. I don’t know how.”

  “You could learn.”

  I blinked away tears. “I can’t let Ari do that to herself. You can’t let Ari do that to herself. Grimm, I don’t know about. This all begins with him, maybe it ends with him, but I won’t let Ari harm herself for me.”

  “I’m not sure she has to.” Liam’s voice, almost a purr-growl, made me curious who was speaking—Liam, or his curse. “There are other rituals. Other choices, but we’d need time.”

  “I can buy you that t
ime. Isolde is scary, but nothing I can’t deal with.”

  He wasn’t fooled by my false bravado. He’d never been fooled, not from the moment I met him, somehow seeing through it to the me I worked to keep hidden. “I have a few ideas. I just need time.”

  Pulling my compact from my pocket, I flipped it open. Grimm waited there, without even being called. “So how does this work? She isn’t summoning me.”

  “Go home. Get some sleep, and tomorrow you can report to her after breakfast. A handmaiden may always approach her queen without being summoned, but you need to be at your best to deal with her.” Grimm faded away, his command given.

  Liam put his arm around my shoulder, and together we found our way home and into bed.

  • • •

  I WOKE WITH a start, unsure what had roused me from my sleep. Beside me, Liam rumbled like a chain saw committing a redwood massacre, wisps of wood smoke tinting his breath as he exhaled. I slipped from the bed. My stomach turned flips and knotted in a feeling almost like the pull when Isolde summoned me before.

  I dressed in the dark and, after lacing up my running shoes, slipped out into the three a.m. darkness. The streets are never really empty; the traffic never stops. At night the garbage trucks and delivery vans and construction vehicles come out like vampires and ghosts, afraid of a little sun and a few million people.

  I ran without purpose, letting my feet guide me. When they tired, I stepped on board the first bus, losing myself in the swirl of passing lights and gazing out the window, while I worried about how I’d retrieve stolen souls. The Mihails hadn’t been pleasant people in life. I doubted the afterlife improved their dispostions.

  More than anything, I worried about how I’d survive the Black Queen. Though Grimm often spoke of how I needed to take care of myself, a nervous excitement flowed into me from Isolde’s manacle.

  This foreign feeling reminded me of the time Grimm found a building maintenance firm that would charge us half what we paid before. Something had the Black Queen so pleased her feelings washed over into me, and I doubted it was that she’d found a good deal on shoes.

  So I switched buses and rode to the gates of Kingdom. A bare street corner for anyone not associated with magic. More like an interchange for me. Outside the gates, I held my bracelet tight and looked into a shop window. “Grimm. Something’s going on with the Black Queen. I can feel it.”

  He appeared, a faint reflection of his normal splendor, blotting out the “SALE PRICES” writing in the window. “Has she summoned you again?”

  “No. But I feel something. Something exciting, or happy.” The possibilities that could excite the Black Queen made my stomach churn.

  “You are bonded to her, and it stands to reason that the bond works both ways. Do not show her fear or respect, Marissa. She is due neither, but do not provoke her without reason. I will let you pass the gates unassisted.” Grimm held out his arm toward the street corner where the gates split Kingdom from the city.

  I ran for them, head-on, straight through them, as a maelstrom of darkness and shadow burst outward, coating the city streets with oil and transforming the streetlamps into torture chambers where unlucky pixies burned, lighting the way into Low Kingdom.

  Behind me, the gates stood barred, covered in sharp glass and thorns. I had no intention of leaving that way. My biggest worry were the denizens of Low Kingdom. Early morning was like nine a.m. for the hags and hangmen.

  The streets of Low Kingdom stood empty. Only the occasional bat flittered from building to building. No drunken carousing, no screaming in the night as creatures devoured one another.

  With each step, my feet crushed broken glass, the loudest noise in the city. The crawling feeling like a roach on the back of my neck said I wasn’t alone. I just couldn’t see whoever kept me company. So I planned a distraction. After rummaging through a trash mound, I took out a liquor bottle and hurled it far down the street. The darkness swallowed it, but the crash of breaking glass echoed. If whatever kept me company didn’t know where I was already, it would head for the noise.

  Like the patter of distant rain, footsteps rushed my way. Too late, I spotted the third-story windows, where faces pressed against the windows. Hags watched below with fear in their eyes. Not looking at me, but at the darkness beyond.

  I backed up against the nearest building, where fingernails and molars jutted from the brick, keeping my eyes on the intersection ahead.

  The monster that emerged from the darkness galloped on six feet, springing along like a cheetah. Its malformed body consisted of six legs grafted onto a torso. The pale white flesh might once have belonged to a human, but no man had that many pelvises. The shoulders jutted outward, hosting arms laced with thick muscle that ended in hairy hand-feet like a gorilla.

  I held very still, hoping it couldn’t see me.

  It hissed, bare teeth jutting from a jaw without lips, snorting air into a nose without cartilage. The neck, what remained, had fused together, locking the head forward, so it had to twist its entire body to look from side to side.

  Then it stopped, staring into the darkness.

  If I’d tried to run, I would have died on the spot. Instead, I turned around and climbed, using the brick edges as handholds to pull myself up. At the first story, I grabbed the fire escape, ignoring the mangled bodies that hung from it, and swung myself on.

  Below, on the street, the abomination skittered back and forth like a hairy cockroach. Unable to look upward, it couldn’t stare at me, but I figured it knew full well where I’d gone. It lunged forward, hands grasping at the brick, gradually turning itself upward, until it fixed me with a dead gaze.

  And began to climb.

  Not that I waited around. I leaped and pulled down an escape ladder, raced up it, and hauled the ladder up behind me. Below, a clang told me the abomination had reached the fire escape. With three times the climbing equipment, it would beat me to the roof handily. So I stopped.

  I waited.

  I listened as it clambered over metal railings, grunting and huffing. When it climbed onto the landing beneath me, I was waiting. When it pulled on the ladder, I jumped. Not up. Down, landing with all my force on the edge of the ladder.

  The fire escape ladder swung like an axe, crashing into the metal, cutting the fingers off the abomination like a meat cleaver. It screamed a cry that echoed in the city streets, flipping backwards, pulling mangled flesh from the metal floor.

  I charged straight at it, knowing this would be my one chance. I’d seen Liam tackle people before, his shoulder lowered, his legs acting like pistons. Liam weighed twice as much as me, but I had adrenaline and surprise on my side. I hit it in the chest, knocking it back to the railing, and pushing it over the edge.

  It tried to grab the fire escape as it fell, but its weight tore its last fingers off. It hit shoulder first into the ground, and didn’t rise.

  After a good twenty minutes on the fire escape to catch my breath, I finally climbed down, and followed the churning in my stomach through the streets of Low Kingdom until I arrived at the castle. From outside, her presence called to me like a beacon.

  Going in didn’t really seem like a good idea. In fact, the longer I stood outside, the more it seemed like this was a horrible idea, and that if I pinched myself enough, I’d wake up to find the smoke alarm going off, or something normal.

  Instead, from the darkness behind me, a thunderstorm of feet echoed. On the moat bridge, I looked back. Abominations lined the street by the thousands, in grotesque shapes and sizes that suggested each came from at least three different people.

  Though the streets of Low Kingdom seemed empty, the people weren’t gone.

  With a chorus of gurgles and strangled hissing, the crowd surged forward, but I didn’t look back. I lunged past the sleeping troll, hurtling into a tunnel of darkness.

  Sixteen

  OUTSIDE, THE TROLL ro
ared, swinging his club so that it thudded against the ground. Maybe he was angry with me. Maybe he was angry at the crowd of abominations setting foot on his bridge. I wasn’t going back to ask. Instead, I made my way with ease through the labyrinth of the castle, that alien feeling of joy growing stronger with each step.

  When I walked down the wide staircase to the main banquet hall, I should have felt fear. Instead, I could barely keep myself from dancing. Isolde sat at the head of the room on the carved wooden throne. Before her, two women knelt.

  One I recognized, and my anger overrode the forced joy. “Gwendolyn Thromson. I thought I might find you here.” Ari’s stepmother kept showing up wherever disasters went down.

  I didn’t miss the surprise on Isolde’s face as I approached. She didn’t know everything.

  Isolde beckoned to me. “Handmaiden. Come and bow.”

  “No.” I’d sooner bow to a statue of myself at the post office than the Black Queen. Grimm said not to provoke her, but some things were nonnegotiable.

  Isolde put one fingernail to her arm, tapping it against her elbow. “Bow.”

  “Never.”

  Her fingernail turned black and lengthened, taking on a purple sheen as it grew into a hooked thorn. She plunged the thorn-nail into her own flesh, and my arm tore open. Now, the number of times I’d been crucified, burned, or nailed with a pneumatic nail gun should have left me whistling, but along with the tearing, a burning like poison coursed down my arm.

  I fell over, curling up in a ball, desperately fighting for breath. When the pain subsided, I opened my eyes to see her standing over me. Her own arm had no traces of a wound, and her fingernail no longer resembled an eagle’s claw. “That wasn’t so hard, was it? Rise, handmaiden, for tonight we celebrate. While I didn’t require your presence, I assure you, one more is an easy accommodation.”

  She put her hands together, forming a triangle, and hummed a tone filled with power. Vines grew from the center of the table, blossoming out into domed silver platters and goblets of wine. “Come.”

  Gwendolyn rose and took a seat at one side of the rectangular table.