In my bathroom, I started the shower and washed my face, and waited.
“Marissa?” Grimm said, not appearing. At times he could be downright polite.
“It’s okay,” I said, and his face appeared in my mirror, looking out at me.
“I trust everything went well?” It was half question, half command.
“It went fine, Grimm. I kissed him, he showed me his neighborhood. He’ll call again tonight, or tomorrow, and probably every day after that.” I sighed.
“My dear, I’ve been doing this longer than your family has been on this continent, and I know that sigh. I’ve heard it many times, from many young ladies. Are you going to be able to complete this?”
I could. I had to. “Yes, Grimm. I’ll get the job done, Ari can swoop in and mend his broken heart, and they can live happily ever after.” We don’t usually mention the HEA bit, but I was tired and my mind was wandering. “When I’m done with this, find someone else to play the wrong girl.”
“I’ll see what I can do. You know it won’t always be like this. Even normal people sometimes manage to find love on their own, and in my view you are far from normal.”
He was right. I knew it somewhere I didn’t want to look right now. Finding true love was a lot easier with the help of magic, but normal people did it all the time. Just not me. “I’m tired. I’ll be in to work on time.”
He left me alone with my wishes.
Five
ON THE WAY in, I passed Ari, jogging on the sidewalk around the block. Behind her came a hellhound. It watched everyone who so much as looked at her like they were made of ham.
“I thought you were done with hounds,” I said as she went by.
Ari stopped and petted the dog on the head until it began to scratch itself and thump wildly, leaving gouges in the concrete. “I was kind of worried running alone. I fed Yeller a poodle and he’s been my best friend ever since.”
It took me four months of training to be able to control hellhounds and even after that they still didn’t like me. Ari reached down and put her hands on either side of its gaping maw. She spoke to it like a toddler. “Who’s a great big demon dog?”
It wagged its scabrous tail and grinned at her, then followed as she jogged off.
I can’t stand princesses.
I went inside and made a cup of coffee strong enough to chase the smell of princess out of my nose. As I drank it and read the Times, Evangeline came in. She was tall, at least six feet, and the rumors around the Agency were she had djinn blood in her on her father’s side. The fact that she always wore a scarf and veil outside Kingdom played off the rumor. Her hair was braided into a single long cord that hung down to her waist. It would have taken me hours to care for that hair, but I suspected Evangeline had pixies she paid to do it. Waste of Glitter in my book.
Evangeline sat down on the corner of my desk. “Heads up. We’re going to Kingdom.”
“Why?” I didn’t go there much, and I worked for the Fairy Godfather.
“Last mile delivery for Grimm. He’s had a package held at the Kingdom Postal Service.”
I loved going to Kingdom, but I detested the KPS like any rational person, for both normal and personal reasons. When I left, Ari was still jogging in circles around the building, followed by the incarnation of torment and pain who adored her. We took the subway and walked to the gates of Kingdom.
Kingdom is what you are probably thinking of when you think of fairy tales. The gates to it stand at the edge of the Avenue on the far end of the city. It’s basically an additional layer on top of the city. Normal city blocks and High Kingdom overlap like ghosts. The only things keeping them separate are the gates.
Think of the gates like a freeway interchange. If you are magical, you take the overpass and wind up in High Kingdom. Normal folks go straight and turn up the Avenue. If you walked down that street, you’d pass everyday shops and everyday stores, and the businesses inside deal in stocks and bonds like normal banks. If I turned down that street with my Agency bracelet, everything changed. The buildings were still there (real estate is expensive), but the shops weren’t dealing art anymore. They’re all armor or swords or charms. Greenbacks weren’t worth a dime in Kingdom; the whole damned place ran on Glitter.
There’s a third road here too, a kind of an underpass to a third layer, but I’d never taken it. I only knew about it because Grimm had lectured me. Glitter was magic made solid, according to him, and it’s basically pure hope. If you turned that corner and passed the gates with not a single hope or dream left on you, not a single bit of love or happiness, you’d find yourself someplace very different—Low Kingdom.
Grimm warned me about it on my first trip, when he gave me the vial I wore around my neck. That vial is probably the only real magic I possess, absolutely unbreakable, a tiny trinket when I wore it and a full-sized bottle in my hand. Like my Agency bracelet, it came back to me if I got too far away, and even if you turned it over, not a single drop of Glitter would escape. I remember him giving it to me that first day, completely empty. Then a single speck materialized in the vial.
“That’s your freedom,” he said, “and one day it will be yours, I promise. As long as you have this vial, you will never be without hope.”
So I couldn’t accidentally wind up in Low Kingdom. The dark alleys, where ogres made their homes and witches weren’t bound by contracts. In the city if you parked illegally they’d tow your car. In Low Kingdom they’d have four trucks tow you in different directions at once.
I stood at the gates and took a deep breath. I’m sure the people pushing their way past me couldn’t figure out why I stopped. Passing the gates hurt, since I wasn’t magic or related to a royal. While my lineage had three percent Neanderthal DNA in it, that qualified me for teaching high school physical education, not to enter High Kingdom.
Similarly, I didn’t have any famous serial killers in my family tree, I didn’t dine on human flesh more than once a year, and I’d never worked for the Internal Revenue Service. I just wasn’t evil, so Low Kingdom was out for me. Grimm’s magic made the difference. It cost him to get me in, like a toll, and he paid by the minute to keep me in the place. I took a deep breath and walked forward, keeping my eyes open.
Three steps in it hit me like an electric shock, jolting over my body, but I kept my eyes open. I never wanted to miss this part. I took one more step forward and the world changed. It was like I stood in a river of color that swept outward from my feet. The normal folks faded out like ghosts, and the streets rippled and became shining gold.
Banners hung from the buildings and in the sky above wyverns circled, hoping a stockbroker or two might jump. They went by the five-second rule—if it’s going to hit the ground in five seconds it was fair game. I let my gaze follow the buildings up. Normal buildings in the city were never more than sixty stories high. In Kingdom they went up even farther, built on top of the shells of their normal counterparts.
The crowd on the streets cheered as a prince came riding by on a mustang (the car), his hair waving in the wind. He’d probably killed a monster on the field of battle, or killed a witch in her lair, or maybe made a killing on the stock market. It was hard to tell with princes.
Evangeline knelt down and picked something up. “Hey, someone dropped a quarter.” She didn’t care about the sights or sounds or smells of Kingdom. Did I mention the smell? The whole city always smelled like one big urinal to me. Kingdom smelled like someone ground breath mints into the concrete. I knew one day my vial would be full and I’d pay my debt. The Agency bracelet would only be a gold chain on my wrist. I’d gain my freedom and lose the ability to walk into Kingdom. It was a trade I’d make any day, on the spot.