“See you soon, Grimm.”
What I did next was crazy and desperate, and that’s the only reason it worked. I took off the vial and tossed it into the gutter. I couldn’t afford one single speck of hope on me for it to work. I walked to the corner of the Avenue and closed my eyes. I thought about my family. About my mother. My sister. Ari, and the way Liam had looked at me when I’d told him what I did. I wrapped my sorrow and pain like a cloak about me, and I walked forward. I made it fifteen, maybe twenty paces. I tripped on the curb and went flying into the street.
Rough cobblestones gouged into my hands, and when I opened my eyes I knelt in the filth and the sewage of the Low Kingdom. Only the occasional street lamp flickered while a pixie burned to death. I glanced back at the gates. These were made to keep victims in, not out. Thorns and razor-sharp glass jutted from them.
A drunken man towered over me like an ogre. “You’ll not be getting out that way, lass.”
He reached for me, and I tripped him, throwing him into the gutter. In my worst Scottish brogue I answered, “You’ll not be getting me that way, lad.” I checked my running shoes and ran. In the low streets of Kingdom, a chase is like a fox hunt, and soon I had everything from kitsune to a few wolves stalking me. They were used to following city girls who stumbled down the wrong street, not agents with a thousand miles under their soles. Plus, I wasn’t running for the sake for running. For the first time in my life, I was running toward something instead of away from it.
I rounded corners, splashed through waste piles, and, generally speaking, ran like hell until I found it. Low Kingdom almost exactly mirrored High Kingdom, and the Isyle Witch’s shop lay exactly where I expected. No bond statements on her door, and the cages and jars lined the outside window, but I walked in without fear. Inside, a true cauldron bubbled as she stirred it.
She looked at me with those yellow, diseased eyes and nearly dropped her ladle. “Handmaiden, it is not yet time.”
I reached up to my neck, where I knew the vial would be. Like my old Agency bracelet, it was mine and couldn’t be lost or stolen, but now that I was past the gates, nothing would kick me out of Low Kingdom. High Kingdom, on the other hand, remained a problem. “I need to be able to go to High Kingdom.”
She cackled with glee. “One both blessed and cursed could walk the streets.”
The thought made me pause. A person torn between blessings and curses could walk the streets of Kingdom. My blessings gave me enough grief trying to help. In a way, I already had a curse. “What does it cost?” I plopped my vial on the magic scale, and it didn’t even move.
“Harakathin are expensive.”
Another idea came to me. One that made me frightened and hopeful at the same time. “What if I already had one you could use? One you could change.” The scale swung up, hanging far lower. “Do it.” I watched years of Glitter drain away in seconds. Years of blood, bruises, and broken bones. Years of living someone else’s life.
The witch swung her hand up in the air and seized something, and I felt it scream as she plunged it into the cauldron. As it boiled, the steam formed a mist that filled the shop. She lifted it up out of the cauldron, and in the mist I could see how it had been twisted. The teeth no longer fit in its mouth, it had two tails, and when it moved it shook, with fear, rage, or both.
The witch held out a claw toward me, beckoning. “It must be claimed.”
I reached for the curse and it swiped at me, baring its teeth. “I claim it. It is mine.” I felt it burn inside me, connecting to a part of me I couldn’t see.
The witch bowed her head. “I am honored to be of service, handmaiden. You have needs?”
“Fleshing silver.” I handed her the vial.
“You dare paint a way to your battle? I see why you are her chosen.” She disappeared into the shop and came out with a flask, made of rusted metal. Only a tiny trace of glitter remained in my vial.
I took the lid off and the smell curled its way into my nose, the cloying sweet stench of brined cat. “One last thing. I don’t have spirit sight. Can you show me the mark?”
She held out her hand, with bony knuckles and long nails. “The price is blood.”
I took her hand without flinching.
She muttered, and I felt the power gathering around her like it did when Ari cast a spell. My hand burned, like it was on fire. Welts rose on my hand, traced in excruciating agony, and the blood ran along them. At last, she let go, and I saw the mark. It began at my wrist and followed up along the back of my hand, a rose with a ring of thorns encircling it. “Thank you,” I said.
“It is not safe on the street. Not all fear our queen yet. Leave by the upper entrance.”
I looked back, and the doorway had changed. Through it I saw High Kingdom. I walked out, finally able to walk that street by my own will and power. Kingdom soldiers in white lined the streets, and the few people standing outside looked nervous. I turned my back on High Kingdom, and headed down toward Dwarf Town.
I wandered the streets for hours, lost, looking for one tiny house in a warren of tiny houses. They all looked the same, and without Evangeline to guide me, I would be wasting hours, maybe days I didn’t have.
I took one more wrong turn, and found myself back on Main Street. Shops stretched back toward the gates, and ahead lay the palace. Off on the right stood the Kingdom Post Office. I bit my tongue, and headed inside, waving to the door gnome, who tried to trip me as I passed. I stood in line, watching the clock tick ever closer to six o’clock. I knew that at six sharp, they’d lock the doors and let out the asps. Exactly where they got buckets of asps, I neither knew nor wanted to.
At five fifty-seven the crowd began to thin as folks with better survival instincts decided to come back another day. At five fifty-eight, a stampede of people exiting the building nearly crushed the door gnome. Only an old woman stood in line before me.
She pushed a handful of pennies across the counter. “I’ll take one hundred and seventy-eight stamps, please.”
The counter gnome picked up a penny and nibbled at it. “These are zinc. Not worth as much as the copper ones, and we don’t accept either.”
The old lady pulled out her dentures and placed them on the counter. “Ou an ave ees ooo,” she said.
“No glitter, no stamps,” said the counter gnome. He looked up at the clock. My watch said I had just enough time to not make it out.
I pulled the vial from my neck and set it down. “I’ll pay. Give her the stamps.”
He glared at me and handed them over, one at a time. In the background, the door clicked. The clock above the grand hall began to chime. From the corners of the room snakes slithered, emerging from holes near the base of the wall.
The old woman threw back her hood and stood up straight. “No ordinary woman am I. You look upon the great enchantress Elinda. For your kindness, I will reward you.”
I hopped over a snake and stood on one of the chairs in the lobby. “I need to find a place in Middle Kingdom.”
She waved a staff that appeared in her hand in a puff of smoke and began to chant. I felt magic rushing in around me, gathering for her spell. She shrieked and fell over to the side. Asps hung like fringe from her ankles.
“Seriously? You can find anywhere in Kingdom, but you can’t even summon a pair of asp-proof boots?” I scooted the chair closer and closer to the counter, where the counter gnome grinned at me.
“No substitutions, exchanges, or refunds,” he said, pushing a pile of stamps at me.
I considered trying to shove them down his throat, but the security systems here made Grimm’s look like a “Keep out” sign. If I were lucky, I’d lose a hand to a laser beam. If I were unlucky, it would be a mutation spell, and I’d gain a hand or six. “I came to say I’m sorry. I’m sorry I ran over Bernie.”