“I need to pick up a few new spells. I’ve still got bruises from that shoplifter and if I’d just knocked her flat to start with, I wouldn’t look like an ink blot.” Grimm didn’t mind me carrying the basics. A few thunderbolts, a flame or two, but I wanted wild magic.
“I don’t think that’s necessary, Marissa. You handled yourself quite well, and our client was most appreciative. He doubled your payment.”
“So I can take the day off, pretty up, get ready?” I grabbed my purse, hoping I’d make it out before he stopped me.
“I think not. I need you to drive into the suburbs and deal with an imp.”
I sighed. Imps reminded me of teenagers, if teenagers were hundreds of years old, hyperactive, and homicidal.
“A certain young lady there had her first child.”
I knew where this was headed. “How many guesses at the name did she waste before she called you?” I had a feeling I already knew what the answer was.
“I’ll give you one guess.”
“Did you get the name?”
Grimm gave me that stern look I get so often and crossed his arms. If there was anything Grimm was good at, it was divining.
“Of course you did. Bet you lunch I can guess too.” He was paying for lunch either way, so I liked to play “Guess the Imp Name.”
“Rumplestiltskin,” I said, wasting my first guess.
Grimm rolled his eyes.
“Humperdink?”
He sighed impatiently. “Really, Marissa, I thought I trained you better.”
“You did,” I said with a laugh. “The name is Brittany.”
Grimm pursed his lips and glared at me over his glasses. “You know it doesn’t count unless you can spell it right.” Some things never changed.
I went back to my office to call in backup. Some of Grimm’s agents had magic in their blood. I got mine the old-fashioned way: I hired it. I drummed my fingers on the desk and punched in the number for Grimm’s contract agency from memory. They were a bunch of lowlife scum who would never stab you in the back because it might ruin a kidney they could sell. I worked with them a lot.
The phone rang, and rang, and rang.
“Hello?” asked a woman on the other end.
I dropped the receiver. My hands felt like ice and my tongue wouldn’t move, but this was no spell.
“Hello? Hello?”
After several seconds I recovered enough to pick up the phone “Mom—”
Only the dial tone waited on the other end of the line. I slammed the phone down on the desk hard enough to crack it.
“Marissa,” said Grimm, appearing in my mirror. “What is wrong? I heard that through the walls.”
“I called home again.”
He nodded. “Did you speak to her?”
My tongue felt thick as I tried to answer. “No. I wanted to. I wanted to.” I couldn’t look at him. I knew this wasn’t a spell he put on me. I froze every time that happened, because it wasn’t supposed to.
“Marissa, if you’re ready—”
“I’m not.” I said. “Let me make a call and I’ll get over there.” It wasn’t what he meant, but the answer was the same. I picked up the phone and dialed the contractors, watching each number with care. With each digit I damned myself for dialing a number I couldn’t consciously remember.
“I need someone who can help me trap an imp,” I said to the receptionist. “Standard pay. Hold him long enough for me to christen him, I’ll take it from there.” I hung up the phone and went down to my car. I was ready to face a half-demon imp that would just as happily devour my brain as my soul. My family, on the other hand, was a different matter.
Three
I DIDN’T GET down to the waterside until nearly eleven in the morning. Turned out our little slice of royalty miscounted the number of guesses she’d made at the imp’s name. I had to use kinetic energy–based negotiation techniques, and those royal types got ticked when I ventilated their palace. I looked a bit like death, with imp blood in my hair. One glance at my watch told me I couldn’t possibly make it back to my apartment to clean up. In fact, I had just enough time to rent a hotel room and take a shower.
At least Grimm had the decency to stay out of the bathroom mirror this time. “You’re running late,” he said while I got dressed.
“Sue me. And while we’re at it, how do you want this played?” Grimm was a master manipulator. He’d have made a good matchmaker, if it weren’t for the fact that his idea of “great chemistry” usually involved explosives.
“Same as always. Have him meet you over an accidental meal, stroll along the waterfront, spend the evening at the marina,” said Grimm. He sounded tired, or maybe that was just me. He didn’t sleep, as best I could tell.
“Kiss?” I asked, though I knew the answer.
“Absolutely not. You need to go now.”
So I checked out of a hotel room I’d had for exactly fifty minutes and rushed to the restaurant. It was an Italian place at the corner of the pier, and I knew Grimm had a table with my name on it. “Table for Goldilocks,” I said. I didn’t have blond hair but that’d always been Grimm’s nickname for me. If I was doing something, it would be done just right.
The host looked at his reservations and nodded. It was supposed to be hard to get a reservation here, but I practically had a standing appointment. He took me on through to my table on the patio. I could watch the ferries come and go, and the prince, well, he could watch me.
I handed back my menu to the waiter without looking. “I’ll have the usual.” I scanned the crowd, then popped the compact open. “Grimm. You might have left out something important.”
“Marissa, close that at once, and go ahead and remove your bracelet.”
Grimm was right. While most princes were so self-absorbed they’d miss a giant, there was the occasional exception that paid attention, and they might be able to see Grimm. Questions about the “Man in the Mirror” would be somewhat awkward at this stage of the relationship. I’d be flying solo for a bit. With his permission, the bracelet hung limp instead of clamped to my wrist.
“You might have forgotten to mention what he looks like.”
Grimm huffed at me. “My dear, he’s a prince.”
So I took the bracelet off and put it in my purse. When I was younger I’d tried running once. I’d put the bracelet in a bag and threw the bag off into the water and ran. I’d made it six blocks away to the bus station when I realized the bracelet was hanging from my wrist. Grimm stood in the window of the terminal watching me, but he never said a word. I did my running on the track after that.
Without the bracelet, my compact was a round mirror attached to a tray full of base that gave me hives if I wore it. I didn’t need it to tell me that my hair had enough curl to misbehave, and not enough to flow in waves over my shoulders. I worked hard at being the wrong woman. My mother always said I’d never turn heads. I told Grimm that once and he said all I needed to do was turn hearts.
I’d have loved to be beautiful. To have flawless skin and a nose that didn’t look tiny, or eyes that didn’t look like my father was part bat. Grimm said the men loved my large brown eyes. I didn’t. I wanted blue eyes like Mom and Dad, but you didn’t get a say in genetic roulette. If I ever got to go home, I was planning on asking Grimm to change my eyes to be like them. A push-up bra and a firm running regimen were the other components of my beauty treatment. To be the wrong woman you didn’t have to look great, just available and interested.
I looked for a prince. He was the real deal, and that was why Grimm wouldn’t take any chances on being spotted. So our prince would have the shine. They all did, and anyone with the slightest relation to magic could see it on them. Even the normal folks could tell in their own way, recognizing that man who walked by with the gleam and the look. The women wanted to melt into him. The men all wanted to be him or beat him. Life was hard for princes.