The troll grabbed me with a free hand, bringing me around to bite with a pair of jaws like a snapping turtle. Troll eyelids were heavy bone as well, but I put one bullet into each nostril, and let that bone hold the bullet in as it bounced around. The troll fell forward and dropped us.
The troll got up exactly once, at which point Evangeline came roaring around the corner at full speed, driving her yellow convertible straight into its chest. That was the sixth convertible she’d destroyed that year. Ari came running from the building to help me up, and as she slid her arm around me, I cried out. Broken ribs hurt.
Liam kicked the troll a few times in the head, managing only to stub his toe. I think he was trying to feel like he had contributed something to its death. He limped over to me, a look of wonder in his eyes. “You jumped out a building? And attacked that thing?” He reached out to wipe a speck of blood from my hair. “Are you crazy?”
Ari put her hands on her hips and looked at him with those blue eyes of hers. “No, you idiot. She’s in love.”
Twenty-Five
THE NEXT FEW minutes were some of the most awkward in my life. Liam kept looking at the troll, as if he expected it to evaporate. He’d look back at me, and I wanted to evaporate. I’m honestly not sure which of us had the bigger impact on him. If you go to the bookstore and look up books on “How to tell the man you accidentally cursed after dumping him because you thought he was someone else that you still have feelings for him,” you won’t find any. I speak from experience.
Once Ari decided there wasn’t going to be a chance of me running into his arms, she ushered me inside to have my ribs x-rayed. I got nine celebration stitches on the back of my head, and by coincidence, pink was the only suture color available. There isn’t much you can do for broken ribs except wait, and so we went home. There I called Grimm, to thank him for the magic.
Grimm chuckled and gave me a smile. “Marissa, your heart went out the window first, I only thought it right you follow it. Anyway, I don’t do that nearly often enough. It felt good to stretch my muscles, as it were.”
“Magic is a supplement for your mind. That’s what you taught me.” I’d heard that statement so often my first year, I dreamed about him saying it. “How’s Liam doing?”
“My dear, do you remember when you met your first harpy?” The smile fled his face and now he looked serious.
I certainly did. I stayed locked in my room for about a week, and Evangeline had to pull me out by my heel. I detest pigeons to this day. “I remember.”
“It’s about a hundred times worse for him. No convenient stories about accidents or terrorists or hallucinations. Though I must say, I think you had a greater impact on him than the troll.”
“Thanks.” I didn’t mean it.
He held up his hands. “In a good way. Give him time. It occurs to me, he might be more important than I had considered. Still, you aren’t doing anything for a few weeks. You need to heal.”
“We don’t have time. The solstice is coming, and no offense, but I don’t think even you can stop the sun.” If there was an emergency, we’d deal with it now. Wounds were patient and would still be with us when more pressing concerns were dealt with.
He shook his head. “We don’t have time to rush into things. I have two wounded agents and a puzzle that will take all my attention to understand. You’ll feel much better with rest, my dear.”
He called me his agent. That meant I’d be back to work, eventually. “Grimm, why don’t you have any male agents? You let men drive, guard, and haul.”
Grimm’s face broke into a wide grin. “If you need something broken or burned or bashed, a man will do just fine. I have nothing against them, and they do those tasks well. If you need a problem handled, you need a woman. Now rest. Heal for a few days. You’ve taught me something important, Marissa. I’m done driving my employees to the breaking point.” He faded away, off to commit a rabbit genocide, I’m sure, trying to figure things out.
I SLEPT FOR over a day. When I finally did wake up, I decided to finish a pet project. In one of Grimm’s books I’d found plans for a spirit cypher, a fancy term for a box that let me see spirits. Think of it like one of those old-time daguerreotypes, except the prism went inside instead of film.
Ari and I built the box, painted it flat black, and I snapped my spirit prism into it. I turned off the lights and held it up. “Blessing, curse, come here.” Grimm’s Visions Room had thousands of these, ones that bend out normal light as well. The things I saw in there had texture and color. What my project showed me looked like a badly drawn cartoon, but it worked. I recognized them. Two feet tall, mostly face, and a set of teeth that would cost me a fortune in orthodontic bills.
“Hey. I missed seeing you.” They seemed to jump up and down, but it got blurry when they moved fast. “Those rocks at the ball, pretty handy. That your work?”
One of them jumped up and down, which either meant “yes” or “I need to use the litter box.”
“I have a question for you two. I know you can’t talk, but I bet you see magic better than Ari. Can you see this?” I held up my hand.
One of them approached. My hand looked gray and almost shapeless through the spirit cypher. My blessing opened its mouth and a tongue like an octopus tentacle slithered out. I shivered as it sniffed my hand, and licked a spot on my wrist. The hairs on my arm stood up as it did so.
“Is it the mark?”
They both jumped up and down.
“Thank you. Stay close.”
GRIMM GAVE US three days before he announced we’d had enough time to recuperate. I already knew what I wanted to do.
“Grimm, I need the pie box,” I said, as we sat in the conference room. Liam hunched over in the corner, looking like a man lost in a city where everyone spoke a different language.
“We’ve already analyzed the curse,” said Grimm. As he said curse, Liam winced.
“Yeah, but I’ve been thinking, and I’m wondering more about the box it came in. Where did they get it? I’m guessing my mugger was royalty, and you know as well as I do they wouldn’t waltz into a grocery store and pick up a pie. I also doubt they’d trust anyone else to handle something like that.”
Liam sat up. “You called it a curse. Not a disease.”
“Sir, if the term disease makes it sound more palatable, I would be willing to use it instead.”
“What is it?” His hands trembled ever so slightly as he waited for the answer.
“It’s a curse,” I said, and I saw the hope go out of him. “A living spell that attaches to you and changes you.” Since the troll attack, he no longer glared in my direction, but he didn’t smile at me either. Every time I left the apartment, I thought of driving over to see him, and every time I picked up the phone, it was him I wanted to call.
“Hold on a minute,” said Evangeline, “I think it’s time we cleared up a few things. You,” she looked at Liam. “Sorry to tell you there are bad things in the world. Even more sorry to tell you you’re carrying around one of the worst. You,” she said to me. “Get over him. He’s never going to trust you again. You,” she said to Grimm, “should have been all over the fact that someone sent a troll after him.”
“Evangeline, are you finished?” asked Grimm. “I’ve given thought to the fact that they were willing to attack here in order to retrieve him, and the only reasonable conclusion is they mean to reclaim the curse.”
Liam put his elbows on the table and his head in his hands. “I’ll give it to them voluntarily if I can have my life back.”