Wish Bound (A Grimm Agency Novel Book 3) Read online

  “We’re not open.” Ari’s voice came from the front of the shop.

  A woman answered, her voice muffled. “Please, I’ve been searching all day. I need something.” Her voice came clearer as she moved closer, sending shivers through me.

  Kyra. Her boots clopped against the stone floor inches away. “I have to find some unicorn essence.”

  I nearly choked. “Essence” was a marketing term made up to make the substance palpable to people who’d never seen a real unicorn. Once you saw one, with the gangrenous sores covering it, and smelled the stench of decay, the fact that it had a horn didn’t do much for the memory.

  The dry scratch of a quill on parchment came from just above me, then Kyra spoke. “And these, if you have them.”

  “I said we’re closed.” The crystal aquarium on the counter reflected a flash of white as Ari froze over the exit with solid ice. “But I guess one customer won’t hurt.” Ari’s voice pricked with worry and, to my chagrin, concern. “What exactly are you trying to assemble?”

  The soft pad of Ari’s running shoes came closer to the counter, and she leaned over, studying the list. “I won’t make you a possession spell.”

  “That’s not what this is. You get the ingredients, I’ll work the spell myself.”

  “Sure you will. Sweetheart, I’d have trouble with this one. Unicorn goo, the heart of a gnome, ogre marrow, and frail heart. Is it to counter some sort of disease? This won’t cure it—the binding agents aren’t right.” Ari stepped around behind the counter, giving me a glance that told me to shut up and hold still.

  “There’s no cure. I need something to help control it.” Her next words came out a whisper. “Please, it’s for my son.”

  That helped me with the whole “shut up” thing. I couldn’t have spoken if I had to. Kyra had a son, a young one, judging from the meal she’d enjoyed, chicken nuggets and apple juice.

  “You should go to your queen for spells. Most of them tend to be territorial.” Ari kept her voice clear, though her hands on the countertop trembled.

  For a moment, silence held sway in the shop. “I don’t want her involved. I’ll pay double your rate.” The desperation in Kyra’s voice worried me. I’d seen what desperate people could bring themselves to do.

  I shook my head, looking up at Ari, trying to catch her eye. With one foot, I stretched out to tap her leg.

  Ari ignored me. “You have to do something for me if you want my help.”

  “Name your price.”

  Ari turned without answering, and walked into the back room.

  Though I hid beneath the wooden countertop, a voice inside me whispered that Kyra could see me. Not because I could see her in a reflection, but because she stood so close I could hear each breath, tense, like a tiger preparing to spring.

  I could stab her. From what I’d seen of the thorn blade, it would cut through the counter like butter, straight into Kyra’s chest. She’d never know what hit her. Without even meaning to, my fingers curled around the handle of that infernal blade.

  I don’t mean I pulled it out of my purse, or out of my pocket. I thought about using the blade, and I had it. That’s all it took to summon it to me. And the longer Ari kept me waiting, the greater my desire to use it grew. Assuming the blade would honor my wishes.

  That tiny voice inside me told me over and over that all I’d have to do is jerk it in her direction. The blade would do the rest. The image of her collapsing in a pool of red brought a smile to my lips, and shot a bolt of fear straight through me.

  I threw the handle away, realizing too late what I’d done.

  It hit a glass vase on the floor near the entrance to the storage warehouse, ringing it like a bell.

  Kyra caught her breath, and the shop went silent.

  With my knees drawn against me, I pressed myself up against the counter. Only then did it occur to me that Kyra, too, kept a blade of thorns. She would use it, if our positions were reversed. In my head, I rehearsed the motions I would take. Swing myself up, using the counter, roll across the counter and into her.

  From there it would be clutch fighting, clawing, biting.

  I could win.

  But if she managed to speak, to call, to summon the Black Queen, Ari would die in a heartbeat. No story I could conjure would fool the woman known as the Root of Lies.

  So Kyra wouldn’t get the chance to speak.

  I braced myself, crouched instead of cowered.

  “All right.” Ari swept out of the back room, her arms full of vials. She paused, sensing the tension in the room, then stepped to the worktable. “This isn’t exactly what you ordered, but I’m guessing we’re up against some form of autoimmune disease. So we’re going to use regular marrow, and add a touch of wort instead.”

  I forced the air out of my lungs to keep from yelping.

  The whole time Ari worked, she chattered like a rabid monkey. A rabid monkey tasked with cleaning the cauldron, refilling it, and adding a list of ingredients that made processed cheese look pure.

  Kyra answered in one-word grunts, as she paced back and forth, her boots scuffing the floor.

  After Ari cast the spell, after she’d poured it into a golden flask and dipped the top in wax to seal it, she held it in one hand, away from the counter. “I give you this, on one condition.”

  “I said name it.”

  “Leave the Black Queen’s service. I can put you in touch with someone who can help.” Ari held the potion closer, her fist wrapped around it.

  “I can’t.” The anger in Kyra’s voice could have painted the entire shop red. “I am bound to her, body and soul. Her word is my command, her will, my life.”

  Ari couldn’t hide her shock, staring at Kyra. “Why?”

  “I thought she could help. I pledged myself to her, meaning to ask for a cure, but now I don’t want her anywhere near my son.” A golden cloud of glitter dusted the counter as something thumped on it. “Take your payment, witch, and give me my potion.” Now iron resolve braced her words. I’d used that tone myself more times than I could count.

  “You could break free—”

  “I don’t want to.” A fist slammed into the counter, and Ari dropped the potion. It rolled to my feet, clinking in the dust. “I want my potion. I want to leave, and I want it now, before I kill you.”

  I gripped the counter and prepared to leap upward. One chance. It wasn’t like Kyra didn’t have it coming. At that moment, it hit me. I was planning a murder of my own. On my own. With fists clenched, I closed my eyes. I wouldn’t move unless she did.

  Ari reached out her hand, drawing the potion through the air to her. She set it on the countertop and stepped back. “Take it. Get out of my shop.” Ari raised a hand, and the smell of burned dust filled the air as she melted the ice blocking the doorway.

  Kyra’s footsteps clopped away, leaving me a complete wreck. I’d have liked to sit beneath the counter and catch my breath, but Ari grabbed my hand the moment Kyra was gone and pulled me up. “We’re going back to the Agency.”

  “You shouldn’t have helped her. Every minute she spent looking for that potion was one more minute she wasn’t doing something for the Black Queen.”

  Ari turned back to me. “She doesn’t have a fairy keeping the Black Queen out of her mind. You’ve seen what the Black Queen can do to your body. Imagine what it’s like to have your mind change.”

  “You don’t know what I’m feeling, except angry and violent.” I thought of my old gun, in a box in Grimm’s office, and shuddered. “When did you put the shine on your spells? You could have been Miss Magic two years ago.”

  “Four years ago, yesterday.” Ari turned toward me, and pulled her hair back. Ari’s once-perfect complexion held lines I hadn’t seen before, and she wiped her eyes.

  “You’ve only worked for Grimm four years.”

  “No. I spe
nt four years practicing with him, yesterday. Time isn’t the same in his realm. Judging from the number of birthday cakes he brought me between tests, I’m guessing I’m twenty-six.”

  Four years of Ari’s life passed in one day of mine. I couldn’t cope with the thought of that, couldn’t bring myself to acknowledge it. Four years of constant training. And four years without friends, or the human dishrag she called a boyfriend. “Does Mrs. Pendlebrook know Wyatt’s dating an older woman?”

  Ari rolled her yellow eyes—I could tell because the crimson blood vessels that contrasted with the yellow moved when she did. “I missed him more than I could say. Wyatt has to help me get ready to bind the spells.” She pulled me by the hand, leading me to the shop door. As she approached, it locked onto High Kingdom.

  A creature straight out of my nightmares lumbered past, pausing to look at the broken brickway before continuing on.

  “That’s one of Isolde’s creations.” I swore, reaching for my gun.

  “In High Kingdom.” Ari held out her arm and a broom whipped to her hand, a gnarled handle with twigs bound to it. “Why aren’t the police taking care of it?” She lifted a mirror from the side.

  We called together. “Grimm.”

  The mirror went blank, then his face faded in, and his eyes popped open. After all these years, I recognized the signs of Grimm busy foretelling the future. “Ladies, High Kingdom is not safe.”

  I checked my gun and nodded. “Police?”

  “Overwhelmed. I am currently counseling the army to act, but without the kings to command them, they have only agreed to mobilize and gather.” Grimm shook his head, disappointed. “By the time they respond it will be too late for far too many innocent victims.”

  Just past the three laws of magic lay another rule of the universe: Never underestimate the ineffectiveness of a bureaucracy.

  Ari and I exchanged a glance that said everything, and she nodded. Together, we stepped past the pile of bricks, which zipped themselves up behind us with only a glance from Ari. The screams from every direction, the roaring of abominations, alarms, and sirens blasted us.

  We’d stepped out of the shop and into a war.

  “Where to first?” I looked to Ari, since she now packed more heat in her fingertips than all of my ammo put together.

  “I think—” Ari stopped as a delivery truck went sailing through the intersection. Behind it, a couple cowered on a building stoop as one of those abominations lumbered nearer.

  I didn’t think, just squeezed off a couple shots, nailing it in the shoulder. I’d seen mosquitoes with more effect than my bullets, but it did do the one thing I wanted.

  The abomination turned to look at me, opening jaws that held other jaws, baring each row of teeth at me as it gurgled.

  And then it charged for me.

  Twenty

  MY CUNNING PLAN began and ended at “get the monster’s attention.” The next plan I formed on the spur of the moment. It involved running, more running, and maybe some hiding, if I survived that long. I dashed down the street and hid behind a singing flower cart for just a moment, which was all the time it took for the abomination to kick the cart clean through the building window behind me. The cart sang “So Long, Farewell” right up until it smashed to pieces with a falsetto shriek.

  If you need a partner, you’ll never regret bringing a witch to the party. I was used to feeling Ari breathing in magic and throwing it out as fire, ice, or lightning. I expected her to use the broom in the normal manner, flying by the monster to keep it busy.

  Instead, she held the broom like a guitar. With a strum of the broom twigs, it threw a ball of green light at the monster. A distraction, I thought, until the orb blew a chunk the size of a guinea pig out of the monster’s chest. The abomination obviously came from the same line of design as the body Prince Mihail was sporting, looking like the entire offensive line of a football team mashed together.

  Ari strummed a few more times, knocking the abomination on its deformed rear end. With a few more bolts, it shuddered to the ground and didn’t rise.

  I gave the pointy end of Ari’s broom a fresh dose of respect. “I thought witches rode those.”

  Ari tossed me the broom. Instead of some magnificent weapon, I held a bundle of dry wood and twigs. “I tried exactly once while Grimm was training me. You want that between your thighs? I’d rather use it to focus.”

  I handed the stick of doom back to Ari and glanced around, finding a parked car to call Grimm from. “Grimm, how many of these things are there?”

  Grimm appeared in the side-view mirror, then jumped to an unbroken widow display. “Six more, but they are scattered several blocks apart, wandering aimlessly.”

  A few blocks down the street, I spotted the beginning of a plan. An armored truck nestled against the curb, with the engine still running. “Come on.” We sprinted to the truck.

  The last time I had to hijack an armored car, the guards weren’t kind enough to leave it running. This time around, I hopped into the driver’s seat, snapped my seat belt, and rolled away from the curb the moment Ari leaped in.

  With Grimm in the rearview mirror calling directions like the world’s most magical GPS, I used the sidewalk to bypass clogged streets. As I approached the first abomination, I wondered which was tougher, the monsters or the machine. For the record, eight tons of Detroit steel will beat down a monster any day. We plowed over the first abomination without losing speed. The second one almost got a chance to run before I crushed its skull with my patented “parallel park of death.” As we rounded the corner on another, Ari rolled down the window and leaned out, her broom resting on her shoulder.

  If she ever went out for the majors, they’d need to invent a new kind of ball, one that wouldn’t get blasted to smithereens by a wooden broom. Like a country girl on a mailbox rampage, Ari swung her broom right at a creature’s head and, as far as I was concerned, scored a grand slam of gore. The rain of flesh left its head stuck on my windshield in a hail of wet flesh.

  “Where are the other two?” I looked to the mirror for directions, while Grimm closed his eyes in concentration.

  “Two blocks west. Arianna, please avoid friendly fire.”

  Though abandoned cars filled the streets, I managed to avoid taking the subway in an armored car, instead crushing parking meters, which yelped like dogs as I ran them over.

  One block over, the traffic jam stood so thick only a monster truck could get through, and I didn’t have time to call the post office, so we left our ride and ran on foot.

  The sound of crushing metal and breaking glass led me to the corner, where an abomination of flesh, a nightmare wolf, and the man of my dreams fought.

  The abomination, like the rest of the Black Queen’s work, barely resembled a fourteen-foot human. Its rib cage lay bare, with jagged, thorny spikes jutting from every angle.

  The nightmare, an eight-foot-tall, four-foot-wide wolf, I recognized as Mikey.

  Liam had let the curse take over entirely, becoming a dragon the length of a station wagon, with reddish-green scales and a mouth that could have swallowed a shopping cart.

  The abomination’s hands ended in clusters of bone spikes, like a medieval morning star attached to each wrist. It swung them overhand, missing Mikey by a paw’s width and crushing the hood of a sports car.

  Mikey looked over at us and howled. I hoped it was a welcome howl, rather than a “Hey, fresh food” howl.

  Liam’s head snapped our direction, and he hissed in a way that either meant “What are you doing here?” or “Don’t you owe me an apology?”

  Both of which were excellent questions.

  Lining up her broom like a sniper rifle, Ari strummed off a few rounds of explosive light, which tore the flesh from the abomination’s shoulder. To my horror, the flesh grew back like pink tongues of muscle, then the bones lengthened, forming armor over the w
ound.

  The abomination spun in a circle, bashing Mikey across the street and through a door. His return blow hit Liam’s dragon head with a thunk that made me pray his brain was only the size of a peanut, shielded by half a ton of meat and bone.

  The monster came for Ari. The other abominations had wandered, destroying, smashing as they saw fit. This one recognized a threat when it saw one. It leaped onto the roofs of cars, leaving an entire row of cabs looking about like normal as it sprinted toward us.

  I moved to the side as I fired, hoping to give it an iron overdose with each bullet. Bullets in the ribs barely bothered it; bullets in the knees, however, got its attention. It swerved, coming after me.

  I would have run.

  I didn’t get the chance.

  As I turned, my foot slipped on an expanding floor of ice that burst like a white oil slick from Ari’s finger tips. The wave of ice solidified under the abomination right as it brought its foot down, sending it face-first to the ground just like me.

  The sheer mass and momentum kept it moving, sliding like a bone bulldozer straight into me, plowing me along in front of it.

  Ari didn’t watch. She didn’t look; she kept her eyes closed, her hands moving before her like magic was cloth she could braid. And maybe it was, as a wall of light snapped outward like a barrier. I slid through it without a scratch. The abomination plowed into it like Ari’s wall was made of stone.

  Then those damned laws of physics cut in.

  I think, if Ari had time, she could have created a soft wall. A spring-loaded one, something to absorb the force and redirect it. Instead, all of the momentum went straight into the wall, then hit Ari. She flew like a rag doll.

  The glass storefront behind us had been destroyed already, and Ari sailed through the air, crashing into a rack of glittering ball gowns. Her wall of light disappeared along with her consciousness, leaving me two feet from the monster.

  It raised a head, and I put a bullet into each eye. The eyes grew back, tiny sparks of fire lighting the darkness of its pupils. And the bone armor enchantment took over. Thick bone grew downward from the eye socket, sealing over the eyes, leaving them blind.