Free Agent Page 3

  We danced out the last measures, waiting until the final tones went silent before we stopped. “Marissa Locks, will I see you again?”

  Part of me was happy—that question was the key to the whole assignment. The other part of me knew from here on out the lies and pain only got deeper. “Do you want to?” I knew the answer.

  “Absolutely.”

  I had the card in my palm already. It was blank on one side, like my past, and contained lies on the other side, like that day. The only true part of it was the phone number, but that’s all that had to be when you were working almost-magic. There was a moment, when I went to pull away and felt his hand on my shoulder, when I thought about it. About letting my lips steal a kiss Grimm would never know about. But my heart had already done worse things that day, so I left him.

  At the stroke of midnight I felt the bracelet click upon my wrist, and Grimm spoke to me from the cab driver’s rearview mirror. “My dear, did you get the second date?”

  “Of course I did,” I said, and bit back a tear.

  Four

  I AVOIDED LIAM’S calls for a week, because a good spell took time to put together. Meanwhile there was a ton of work to do, mostly with Ari. She’d been to see Leona, and it had worked wonders for her hair. The rest of her was going to take a lot of sweat and pain with her personal trainer: me.

  I had Ari meet me down at the jogging track in the park. The pale January sun barely peeked through the morning clouds. Two massive black dogs the size of Shetland ponies followed me, padding along on silent feet.

  Ari stared at them. “What are those?”

  On the way over, I had stopped by animal control and picked up motivational assistance. “Meet Lassie and Yeller. Hellhounds.” The dogs stopped when I did and glared at her. In the dawn shadows their eyes glowed red and steam drifted from their noses. “I’m going to tell them to follow. Long as you keep moving, nothing bad happens.”

  Ari gave up stretching and backed away. Her freckles stood out that much more with her face so pale. “What if I need to stop?”

  “I have bandages in my purse.” Truth was, unless your last name was Baskerville, the hounds probably weren’t going to do much more than nip you, but Ari didn’t need to know that. I gave the command whistle and they began to advance.

  Ari took off at a sprint that predictably ended about fifty yards away. Lassie, Yeller, and I kept a nice steady pace until we caught up. The more times we went around, the more it began to hurt her. She spent more time looking over her shoulder than watching where she was going. “I thought there would be a ritual for this.”

  I laughed. “There is, and we’re performing it. One ounce of Glitter removes one ounce of fat, but laps are free. You don’t have jogging tracks in your part of Kingdom?”

  She stopped running for a moment to take a sip of water, and one of the hounds nipped at her. “I don’t know. I don’t get to go often.”

  So she really was a third-string princess. In a way the match with Liam made a lot more sense. The thought of him sent pangs of jealousy through me. “You’ve been there, right?”

  “Yeah, Mom—my real mom—used to bring me in for my birthday every year. Dad would throw a big party and we’d celebrate until midnight. Every year, he bought a whole nest of averlions. We’d toss them off the top-floor balcony and watch them fly down through the clouds, throwing off lightning as they went.”

  “Averlions are flightless. Like penguins. Or princesses.” Back when I was in training, Grimm had me study the Beast Lexicon. I made it through volume three before I figured out he wasn’t looking at my essay answers. The question that gave it away was “Name the creature you fear the most and how you would deal with it.” I had been up for three days straight and for my answer I invented the Leper-ochaun, a little man who carried disease, hoarded gold, and, worst of all, was Irish. As long as the creature’s name started with A, B, or C, I knew a lot about it.

  I thought about my own birthday, fast approaching, and took a swig from my water bottle. “When’s your next birthday?”

  “October.”

  “Invite me to the party and I’ll teach you to toss those birds like a lawn dart, okay?” It was the least she could do, really, after I set her up. But of course she wouldn’t.

  Ari threw her bottle off to the side and set off around the track, leaving me behind. She left a trail of pissed-off behind her like a cloud, but I was patient and in better shape. Eventually I caught up.

  “There’s not going to be a party.” Ari kept her eyes fixed on the track ahead, refusing to look at me.

  “Mom can’t afford the Glitter?” I asked. Then I caught her tone and realized what I’d missed. Stupid me. Stupid, stupid, stupid. “Lassie, Yeller, go eat a pit bull or something.” They bounded off into the park. I caught Ari by the hand. “What happened to your mom?”

  “Cancer.” Magic can cure almost anything, but cancer is a bitch. She locked her eyes on the ground and started moving, grunting and huffing as she struggled along the track.

  “Do you know your prince?”

  She shook her head. I should have said “He’s nice” or “You’re lucky” or something like that, but all I could think of was how she’d meet Liam and swoon over him and latch onto him like a four-eyed barnacle. She huffed along and looked over at me. “I don’t want to get married.”

  “Hey, princess, hold on.”

  “I said call me Ari.”

  “Your dad know about this?” The whole reluctant-bride act tended to screw this sort of thing up. Princes were used to women sucking up to them, and that look she gave me wasn’t going to win one.

  “He knows. He’s paying for Fairy Godfather to work his magic.”

  “Why? Are you that desperate to get back into Kingdom?” Kingdom took the gated community concept to a new level, creating a private city for those with money and magic to burn. Exclusive didn’t come close to describing it, and the home owner’s associations there had a habit of fining folks one head per every rule violation.

  Her eyes flashed the way princesses’ eyes did when they were mad. I think it was supposed to make them look formidable, but I’d seen it so often it was just sort of cute. “I don’t care about Kingdom. I care about getting away from—” She looked away. “My dad’s new wife. We don’t get along.”

  Fairy tales weren’t the only place where stepmothers and daughters didn’t see eye to eye. The solution these days involved a burly man with a truck, not a prince on a horse. “So move out. It’s the twenty-first century, not the seventh. I was living on my own at eighteen, in the city.”

  “I can’t. I’m the family seal bearer.”

  Finally the whole picture made sense. As her family’s seal bearer she had magic, real magic, and that meant the normal rules wouldn’t apply. She’d live at home until Stepmommy released her or she married. The seal bearer for a family does not run away from home. “You’re going to be happy,” I said, the best thing I could do at the time. I whistled for the hounds and they came. I set them to “torment,” and took off running again, letting their bloody muzzles and glowing red eyes drive away the worry in my heart.

  • • •

  GRIMM AND EVANGELINE worked with Ari in the evenings. She had to learn to waltz, learn to speak, learn how to bat her eyelashes just right. I knew the charade, I’d had it drilled into me a dozen times at least, but for Ari this was all new. She’d be doing it for real, and if what I saw was any indication, she’d be doing it poorly.

  “You let him talk about him,” said Grimm during one of the training sessions, “He’s a man: I promise it will be his favorite subject.”

  Ari looked like she wanted to puke, and since she’d been training for hours, they let her take a break.

  “How’s your part of the ritual going?” I asked as she leaned up against the kitchenette counter.

  “I’m so tired. My leg hurts, and my arm hurts worse.” She glared at me.

  I looked at the tiny bandage on her calf. In my defen
se, I had warned her to keep moving. Yeller had spent five minutes licking his butt to get the taste of princess out of his mouth.

  “He’s not like other princes,” I said.

  Ari looked up at me with hope.”You’ve met him?”

  I nodded. “Getting things in order. Ready for you.” It was about as true as what I’d told him, but it left a smile on her face, and at least someone was happy.

  That night I returned Liam’s call. I told him I’d been busy with work but that I couldn’t stop thinking about him. Both things were truer than I wanted. As expected, he asked me to dinner and a movie, and of course I accepted. I went upstairs to Grimm’s office to have a little chat.

  Grimm’s office had a big desk, like you’d expect, and a big chair, like you’d expect, but the chair only had a mirror sitting in it. Not the mirror, of course. Kingdom knows where the real mirror was; probably in a vault below a dungeon, guarded by accountants. This one worked as his business mirror.

  “Marissa, dear, how may I help you?”

  I looked at the wall of weapons in his office with envy. Magic swords, a lasso, that wall had it all. He used to even have a driver’s license that let you get out of any ticket. I was nearly certain Evangeline had it in her purse. There was some fine weaponry on the wall, better than what he gave me.

  “I was wondering, Fairy Godfather,” I said, realizing my nerves were showing through, “how much Glitter a love potion actually costs. We go to all this effort, and honestly—”

  “You were wondering if it wouldn’t be cheaper to enchant? It’s about time you started thinking about the bottom line. No, my dear. Potions are only to be used when time is not available. It’s not about the Glitter, really. It’s about building ties that will last.”

  “But their relationship will be built on a lie.”

  “No, Marissa. Your relationship is built on lies, but theirs will be built on truth, on rebuilding from hurt and learning to share. It’s an arranged truth to be certain, but I’ve done this for centuries, and I’ll take real love over a potion any day.”

  “Tonight is the second date. Dinner theater.”

  Grimm gave me that wry smile of his. “Good girl. Kiss him, hug him, but keep it appropriate for an unmarried princess.”

  “I won’t do anything you wouldn’t do.”

  He frowned.

  “I’m kidding,” I said. I almost was.

  “Oh, and Marissa, you are not to employ hellhounds again in training the princess, do I make myself clear?”

  At that moment I realized why Ari was complaining about her arm. “Sorry. I should’ve known a princess wouldn’t bother with her infernal rabies shot. On the plus side, she’s good for the next five years.”

  “Those hounds are a menace. If it were up to me, we’d eradicate them all.”

  That was not actually true. He knew as well as I did the hellhounds were our only hope of keeping the toy poodle infestation in check.

  “Now that she’s got her shots, I could take her to Inferno. Rock climbing, dodging lost souls, great workout for the upper body. The heat would be good for her complexion—”

  “No.”

  Sometimes, he could be a real killjoy.

  • • •

  LIAM SHOWED UP at six o’clock sharp. We met at a tiny office Grimm keeps for us to use when we need to meet someone we can’t meet at the agency and wouldn’t dare meet at home. I took one look at Liam and decided someone needed to work with him on his fashion sense. One does not show up for a formal date in a T-shirt and jeans. I had spent two hours getting ready and had to ditch it in twenty minutes for a blouse and blue jeans.

  “The limo driver won’t want to be seen with us,” I said.

  He laughed at me. “I thought we’d do something different. Got good walking shoes?”

  I wore my monster-hunting sneakers, so I was ready. We set out on foot, and to my surprise Liam took me down into the subway.

  “It’s going to take a bit to get there,” he said.

  I didn’t mind. It had to be hard being the last son. And frankly, we weren’t going to spend much more time together. So we sat in the subway station and talked. He hadn’t bothered shaving, and his face was scraggly.

  “You going to make a career in loss prevention?” he asked me.

  “Not if my plans work out. This is just to pay the bills.”

  “So what is Miss Marissa Locks going to do someday?”

  I froze. I’d thought a lot about the day when the bracelet came off and I took my memories back. In eight years I’d never thought about the day after that. “What do you want to do with your life?”

  He looked down at the sidewalk. “I want to make things. Beautiful things. Then sell them for lots of money.”

  Maybe he would have made a better king than I thought. The subway arrived and we got on. You want to see a troll or an orc or a goblin, you’ve got to go to Kingdom. If you want to see weird, the subway is the way to go. We sat and held hands and tried not to point or stare. We got off in the wrong part of town.

  There’s Kingdom, which was so lavish it made my apartment seem like an outhouse. Then there was this place, which made living in a cardboard box seem attractive. I checked my bag, feeling the weight of the revolver and wishing I had picked up a few spells to go with me. Of course, I couldn’t use them without him knowing I was more than a normal girl, any more than I could use the bracelet that jingled in my pocket as I walked. The nine millimeter, on the other hand, spoke a language both normal folk and magic folk understood.

  He took my arm and pulled me close to him. “No need to be nervous. You don’t come to this part of town much, I can tell.” I’d actually come there more times than he’d believe. I was pretty sure I ran over my first gnome a couple of blocks from there. I remember because Grimm made me pay to have the tire replaced. Even after the car wash it smelled like gnome guts and Johnson Wax for weeks. Plus I hadn’t been able to get deliveries from Kingdom ever since, meaning if I wanted something, I’d have to go get it myself.

  Liam turned and walked down a flight of steps. “Here.” The dingy neon sign on the door said “Froni’s” and buzzed like a giant housefly. Liam pushed it open and the scent of garlic and basil flooded out, along with the sounds of laughter.

  Inside, red-and-white vinyl tablecloths covered the tables, and a jukebox in the corner blasted music from the nineties.

  Liam grabbed a couple of beers from a crate by the door, and we sat down at an empty table. “Froni,” yelled Liam, “I’ll take the big bowl and a couple of brews.”

  I think several of the spots on the table were spaghetti sauce, and I eyed the silverware, which had a dull white film on it. “Tell me you don’t eat here.”

  He took a swig of the beer. “I love it. One of my favorite places.”

  I’d always been a red wine kind of gal myself. The cook brought over a bowl of spaghetti and sauce and plopped it down on the table with a couple of plates. I held up the fork. “I’m not using this.” Truth is, I had immunizations for almost every disease known to magic or medicine, but there was no cure for nasty.

  Liam squinted at it, picked it up, and touched his tongue to it. “It’s soap film. Rinse it off in your beer, it’ll be fine. That fork’s actually not bad, but you don’t need it.” He spooned out a glob of spaghetti, and to my horror, picked it up with his fingers, slurping it down.

  When I came to work for Grimm, I spent three weeks learning proper manners and table etiquette. I spent more time learning to use my salad fork right than I did practicing at the firing range. One does not eat spaghetti, or anything else for that matter, with fingers. Only cannibals eat with their fingers, Grimm always said. Of course all three times I’d had lunch with the cannibals, they used forks and knives like everyone else.

  “What are you doing? I thought we were going to a show, not flirting with food poisoning.”

  He smiled, showing a gap in his teeth. “We’re going to loosen you up.”

  “With
beer?” I looked at the bottle. It was cheap light beer, with the aroma and color of hobgoblin urine. On second thought, any hobgoblin who started peeing that color would have flown straight to the free clinic immediately.

  “If that’s what it takes. There’s a box of wine on the bar if you’d prefer, and Froni did time in prison, so he makes a mean Merlot with just a can of grape juice and a piece of bread.”

  I closed my eyes. I’d done a lot of awful things in this job. I’d cleaned up after massacres, hunted serial killers, and dealt with the Internal Revenue Service. I figured tonight might actually displace Grimm’s five-year audit on the list of the worst things I’d ever handled. One thing, however, remained true: I always did my job, and did it right. So I took a drink. If I’d rinsed the bottle in the toilet first it wouldn’t have tasted worse: warm, stale beer. Hobgoblin urine couldn’t have been that bad.

  Liam picked up another handful and shoved it into his mouth. “Good. Now take a bite.”

  I shivered down inside, thinking about how Grimm would react when I told him about this tomorrow, and picked up a noodle. My arm hurt in anticipation of new immunizations as I reached into the bowl. Slimy spaghetti threatened to escape my fingers, but I eased the noodle into my mouth and swallowed. Anything to ditch the taste of the beer.

  He took a long pull on his brew. “You have got to learn to relax.”

  So I took another noodle, and then a few at a time. Finally, while he cheered, I picked up a meatball and took a bite out of it, smearing sauce onto my chin and my face. Liam laughed so hard he nearly choked. If he choked to death, Grimm would probably kill me, but Liam had a laugh and smile more infectious than any disease. It warmed a place in my heart I hadn’t known was cold. To hell with Grimm’s manners, at least while he wasn’t watching. It felt good to be with someone I didn’t have to act prim around, even if what I was doing here was an act too. I rolled up my sleeves and took another bite, not worrying about the stains.