I rubbed my head. “Someone was looking for Ari. Someone who thought I was her.” Ari and I traded looks, both of us offended such a mistake could be made.
“What did they want?” asked Ari.
“They wanted you to think of the man you loved. So they could send something after him. It’s a thing that looks like a snake, called a heart seeker.”
“One moment,” said Grimm.
A minute later Rosa came to the door.
Grimm nodded to her. “Princess Arianna, Rosa would like to arrange a safe trip back to your hotel. Isn’t that right, Rosa?”
Rosa gave him one of her sour looks and walked out with Ari behind. With the princess disposed of, we could talk.
My bracelet hummed for a moment, and my hand tingled as Grimm assessed the wound. “You need stitches. Evangeline, if you don’t mind?”
“I’ll get the kit,” said Evangeline.
We got a lot of practice. If I had to go to the emergency room every time I needed stitches I’d have an office there instead.
Evangeline came back, and began to thread her needle. “You want local?”
“Please.”
Her eyes narrowed the slightest bit. Grimm always disapproved of painkillers. In this business it was too easy to reach the point where you never wanted to feel again. She took out a syringe and jabbed it into the nerve cluster. I winced as pain like a stun gun shot up my arm. The pain faded to a dull tingling, and she began to stitch.
“Tell me everything,” Grimm said.
So I told him about the snake and the bite. I told him about the blood, and how it felt like it was cooking my brain. He listened the whole time, nodding to himself.
“Now dear,” he said, “I need you to think clearly, and tell me exactly who you sent it after.”
As if I hadn’t had a bad enough day already. I waited for Evangeline to tie off my sutures and put my hand to my head. It was going to be quite a competition for which hurt worse. “Liam. I thought of Liam.”
Evangeline watched me, her hand covering her mouth. I had a sickening moment where I imagined her telling Grimm about the phone, but she kept her mouth shut. Grimm closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
I waited for him to yell. To scream. To tell me how I’d once again managed to make another massive mistake, and ask aloud what I always figured he wondered: Why on earth he took me as an agent in the first place.
He nodded, like he had through the rest of my story. “You’ve had quite a day, Marissa. Go on back to your office and I’ll call you when my SWAT team clears the MRI room.”
I left the two of them there and pretended I didn’t hear their muffled voices through the wall.
STAFF MEETING, NEXT day, and we were all in the room. Even the part-timers, though it was clear some of us were allowed to ask questions and others would have to keep their questions to themselves.
“The good news,” said Grimm, “is the first son of a leading royal family is not cursed.” He said the word curse, and a tickle slid down my spine, like when you bite tinfoil. “That’s about the only good news. I’ve received six months’ worth of wishes in three days, and they all ask for the same thing: safe transport to Fae, Avalon, or any one of the other realms. I’ve even had requests for passage to Inferno. All the wishers are magical, and all of them are scared. Alpha and Beta Teams, you have your positions. I need ears throughout Kingdom.” Half the room stood up and left. Shopkeepers, maids, you name it. Grimm had ears everywhere.
“Gamma Team, I think you are more likely to hear useful information, but you must be discreet, even if it means delay.” The Gammas were hags and hangmen. I couldn’t stand them, but they could walk into the low streets of Kingdom the same way I entered Main Street, and no one gave them a second glance or a first knife to the belly.
That left me, Evangeline, Clara, and Jess. Clara and Jess used to work for Grimm. Clara was easily sixty, a good twenty years older than Jess. The road map of scars on her made me want to leave this business more every time I looked at her. Grimm had a pension plan, but I didn’t know of anyone who had lived long enough to claim it.
“Clara, I need you in the Court of Queens. Someone near to the prince is targeting him, and I’d bet another royal over anyone else. Jess, you’ll take the princess’s family. If someone didn’t want Arianna to find a husband, a curse would be an expensive but traditional method,” said Grimm.
“I swear that girl is cursed,” I said, and Jess gave me a look of disdain. She looked like a carbon copy of Evangeline, except that her face wasn’t gashed. The two could have been mother and daughter, but were quite possibly half sisters. Odds were the same djinn continued to get lucky all over the city just by promising women wishes. If what women wished for was nine months of pregnancy and eighteen years of responsibility, he could definitely grant that.
“Amateur,” she said. “People are plenty crazy without talking curses. I’ve seen mothers cut their daughters’ throats for a pound of Glitter, and you want to go bringing curses into it. Stick to being the pretty face, it suits you better.”
“Better than it suits you.” I didn’t appreciate Grimm bringing in other agents. I already had to compete with Evangeline for good assignments. Two more ways to divide the work meant I’d be working twice as long. With djinn blood like Evangeline, she could twist me into a pretzel before I could fight back, but I wasn’t going to let her temper or attitude back me down.
She threw the briefing papers across the room. “I don’t have to tolerate this, Grimm. You should get some real help.” She paraded out of the room.
“She certainly hasn’t gotten any more stable,” said Clara. She looked at me. “Girl. Marissa, do you understand what you are suggesting? Do you have any idea how much Glitter it costs for a curse?” I didn’t know what Clara’s heritage or talent was, but in a lot of ways she seemed more confident than Jess. In about every way she seemed saner.
“I have blessings. Got them free after donating blood. I bet all you’ve ever gotten was a cookie and juice.”
A look of recognition and fear ran through her eyes, and she glanced at Grimm for a moment. “Magic creates. Something he should already have taught you. Turning it to destroy something is difficult and dangerous. It’s ten times more difficult, and a hundred times as dangerous. For what it costs for one curse you could hire an army to conquer a kingdom.”
“Forget I said it.” I kept my eyes on the table until Grimm let me leave. He and Clara sat in the room, laughing and talking about years gone by. I wanted to go back in and ask about the curse. I wanted to ask about Liam, and if he was safe. But not while Clara was there. I could image what she’d say about me working the wrong man on a setup.
Later, when we were alone, I asked Evangeline. “Someone’s already spending that kind of Glitter on a curse for the prince. Why not Ari too?”
Evangeline shook her head and went back to filing her nails. “Because she isn’t worth the effort. Cursing her would be like cursing you: a complete waste of Glitter.”
Thirteen
EVANGELINE WENT BACK to the site of my mugging to get the pie box, while I was tasked with a more mundane problem: a lich. They’re what happens when a warlock dies before his time. I believe it ought to be a requirement that every warlock attend weekly mortality counseling sessions, because I’ve never met one yet who thought it was time for him to go.
As usual for this kind of assignment, I brought backup, though more of the staple-slinging than the gunslinging sort. He was a by-the-hour, by-the-book sack of slime named Frank. We approached the brownstone and I felt it right away. It wasn’t the subtle shift of my Agency bracelet. The place actually looked creepy. From the swing out front that kept rocking itself to the wind that played with my hair at the entrance to the courtyard and nowhere else.