I knew that. Grimm expected perfection. Pride made me look back at him, though I know he wanted me to keep my head low. “I have nothing in my life except this job. I have never done less than the best for you.” I knew they could hear me in the lobby, and I didn’t care. Let them hear me in the loading dock for all it mattered. “You said find the prince. You said look for the magic. You taught me what to look for yourself. Why don’t you come out and say I’m lying?”
Instead he waited in silence for me to calm. “You made a mistake, my dear. You said you were tired of being the wrong woman, and I don’t blame you. You said you wanted him for yourself. So I think you were looking for someone more in line with your ideals than the princess’s. Really, have you looked at that man? He’s not exactly prince material.”
My face blushed even more because Evangeline was in the room. I knew exactly what she’d thought when Grimm introduced me as his new agent, and I never wanted her to see this. “I saw the magic.”
Grimm’s face softened for a moment, almost sad. “Marissa, I think perhaps you saw what you wanted to see.”
I couldn’t take it anymore. I stood up. Grimm probably thought I was going to walk out the door. Grimm was wrong. I walked over to the wall of weapons and picked up a case the size of a cigar box. Engravings covered the outside, except for a tiny brass plate. The carvings showed a rose in a ring of woven thorns, the standard of the Black Queen.
Evangeline told me about her. She’d been dead for over four hundred years, and folks in Kingdom were still nervous when her name came up. Depending on who you believed, she was either all of the fairy-tale villains in one or the queen of all of them, but whatever she was, she was powerful. Her magic lay in lies so strong they could twist reality itself, becoming almost true.
Grimm flashed into the stainless steel plating on the wall. “Put that down.”
I opened it and inside the velvet interior was an odd thing. At first glance it looked like a gnarled tree root, and in fact the name engraved on the plate said “Root of Lies.” That’s not what it was. I knew the truth, and couldn’t see it as anything else.
The story goes a righteous prince lopped the Black Queen’s head off to put an end to the lies, but she continued to speak. They quartered her, and burned her, and finally scattered her ashes. Some of her wouldn’t burn. The thing in the box, it was a part of her. Her hand, to be specific, and once you knew, the roots looked like fingernails, bones, and tendons, if bones came polished ebony black.
I put my hand down into the box, and the thing convulsed, gripping me across the palm. Cutting me. Did I mention it was still almost alive, in the box, after all this time? Grimm used it only to force the truth from the most uncooperative of subjects, because the options were tell the truth or die. If you were foolish enough to tell less than the truth while the Root of Lies held you, thorns grew straight from it to your heart, seeking out the lies. Most people told the truth.
Grimm narrowed his eyes and fixed me with a scowl. “Marissa, don’t say a word, not a single word. Put down the Root and we can talk about what happened. There’s no need for theatrics.” As he spoke I felt a compulsion overcome me. I did want to put it back, but not nearly as much as I wanted to do this.
I grasped it harder, digging my nails into the blackened bone, and it returned the favor. “I went to the pier.” It rustled under my hand, raking nails along my palm. “I thought he was a prince.” It convulsed underneath me, slicing the top of my hand. “I saw the magic coming from him.” It squeezed my hand so hard I thought it would break, tearing into my skin, then dropped back into the box, rendered lifeless by the truth.
Evangeline let out her breath. I think if he had had real skin, Grimm would have been sweating. He watched as I returned the Root to its shelf. “Well,” he said, “that definitely complicates matters.”
Nine
THE NEXT DAY I dealt with twelve dancing princesses with blisters on their feet (you would be surprised what wonders a gel insole can work). I put yet another frog in the aquarium until Grimm could deal with him. Before ten thirty I sent two kids who ate a gingerbread house to the hospital to have their stomachs pumped. Grimm was still angry, but at least he wasn’t angry at me. Now it was more about how to actually pull off Ari’s setup.
I risked a trip into the lion’s den (Grimm’s office—we’d had the actual lion’s den removed a couple of years ago) to question him. “Grimm, we need to talk. What about the fae boy? I thought they were damn near invulnerable. So how did a fae child wind up in a wolf larder?”
From what I had heard from Evangeline, the fae were only one step down from Grimm. There was a healthy debate about how big a step it actually was. Wolves were great predators, but the fae guards would have blasted the skin from their skulls the moment they set claw on a child.
“I don’t know,” said Grimm.
The Fairy Godfather never admitted to not knowing. Ever. If you asked him about something he didn’t know, he’d say “I’ll find out shortly,” which meant that he’d already tried.
I wondered how long we’d keep the kid. “You get ahold of the, um, parents?”
He nodded. “I performed the contact ritual this morning. The family will be arriving to retrieve him. You are to be present, but silent. Am I understood?”
I didn’t like letting someone else tell me when to speak and when not to, but I had a mortal fear of death, and dealing with the fae was tricky, very tricky. The wrong move might cost me my life, the wrong word, my soul. Rumor had it the fae could rip your soul right out of your skin, like peeling a banana. “How about you handle it?”
Grimm shook his head. “The fae requested your presence. In case you are wondering, that’s not a request.”
So I got ready to go down and party with the fae. It was safer to meet them outside in the cargo bay than risk them coming up in the elevators and meeting someone. I heard once a few came to visit Grimm unannounced. We were sponging down the walls of the elevator for weeks.
As the hour approached, everyone scurried about. In keeping for the magic kind, noon and midnight were the watch hours of the day. They’d arrive at noon sharp. As much as I wanted to actually see a fae, I detested having to dress up for them. Apparently, having pure magic as the foundation of your world kind of drives down fashion, because they still dressed like “days of yore.” I’m guessing, by the way, that yore is an old English word for “Heavy, itchy, and hard to breath in.”
I exited from Wardrobe in a funk. Their best efforts had made me look like I did on my dates: average. Ari was waiting for me in the waiting room as I left the office. She smiled at me. I scowled back.
“That’s a lovely dress,” she said.
It wasn’t. It looked like I was dressed in a green circus tent. We could make over someone to look like a supermodel, or make the nerdiest prince look dashing and confident, but Grimm had chosen my costume himself. I think it was supposed to represent the medieval messenger pages. That, or a homeless carpet salesman. Ari grabbed my flowery sleeve as I walked by. “Can I speak with you?”
I shook her hand off, tearing a bit of the magenta lace. “I’m no longer handling your case. Haven’t you talked to Fairy Godfather yet?” Obviously she hadn’t, so I took her to the mirror and rapped on it like a door. “Grimm, what do you want me to do with her?”
He snapped into view and gained his regal appearance. “Bring the appointed one with you.”