So was I, if only for a day. We had dinner at the pavilion, and of course I let him pay. We almost didn’t get a table.
“I’m sorry, madam,” said the hostess, “but you are late for your reservation.” Grimm was slipping. Then again, I’d probably upset his predictions by not following the rules.
Liam stepped up, and I was sure he’d have a hundred- dollar bill in his hand and a threat in his voice, as they always did. “I’ve had a wonderful day with my friend here,” he said, “and nothing would make it end better than a meal here. Could you help me?”
Amateur. I bet his big brother would have put it differently, but Liam had his own way of handling things. He would have made a lousy king, but he was a gracious date.
“I have a table by the kitchen,” said the hostess, and we followed her back. It wasn’t dinner under the stars, but it was fine. When it was done we danced by the marina to the band. It turns out all those self-defense moves had another use—dodging your dance partner.
“Sorry,” he said, over and over.
I wished I’d worn my steel-toed slippers.
My cell alarm went off at eleven forty-five, and like all things magic, it was time to end. “I had a wonderful day,” I said, telling him the absolute truth.
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.”