Wish Bound (A Grimm Agency Novel Book 3) (13 page)

Liam grabbed the doorknob and ripped it out of the wood, shattering the door.

I ran to him, grabbing him and pulling him back. “I’ll do this. Let me do this. Please. Go wait in the car.” I watched him amble up the sidewalk. He’d been trying to help in his own way. I couldn’t fault him for that.

“Marissa?” My dad stood in the front doorway, his gaze going from the broken door to me and back again.

“Dad.” I waited, and sure enough, Mom came out. Her black hair had sprinkles of gray, and crow’s-feet surrounded those blue eyes, the color I always wanted my eyes to be. “Mom.”

She didn’t speak, which was good, because I had so much to say to her that I didn’t want to say.

“I brought you this.” I nudged the bags with my foot.

Dad gave me an uneasy glance and looked back to Mom. “A Christmas card would have been okay.”

“You know I don’t celebrate holidays.” I looked at Mom. “Or birthdays. It’s cash.”

Dad unzipped the bag with care. He probably still remembered the surprise birthday gift he gave me that turned out to have an Egyptian cobra nestled inside. Based on the look on his face, if I’d brought him Mikey’s lunch box, he wouldn’t have been more shocked. “Why?”

“You need to go. Now preferably, sooner if possible.” I tried to keep my voice calm when all the pain of leaving them kept coming up.

“Why would we leave?” Mom let go of the doorpost and slithered out beside Dad. “What did you get yourself into this time?”

“I’ll answer your question if you answer mine. Which royal family are you related to?”

The look of disgust on her face made me wonder if it wasn’t Queen Mihail’s family. I didn’t have time for games. “You knew about Fairy Godfather already. You knew about harakathin. You don’t have the shine, so you are related to someone who’s royalty. Who is it?”

Dad turned on Mom, his eyes narrow, and waited.

“My sister married into the Sixth Royal Family.” Mom choked the words out.

“What do you know about the Black Queen?”

She shook her head. “Children’s stories. A myth, like Santa Claus.”

“Saint Nicolae doesn’t come out much, thank Kingdom. Now, you look into my eyes and tell me if you still believe the Black Queen is a myth.” I stared at both until they turned away.

Dad shook his head. “Marigold, honey, I can’t just leave. What will I tell people?”

I bristled at his pet name for me. I wasn’t his little flower, hadn’t been for a decade. “Tell them you won the lottery. Tell them your daughter did. Don’t tell them anything, just don’t be where I can find you. I need you to move somewhere and then not contact me. It should be easy for you.” I regretted those last words the moment I spoke them, but hardened my resolve.

“You failed me. You could have said no to Mom. You could have called me, or come see me. But that doesn’t matter. Do it for Hope. Take the money and take a vacation. Go to Portland, the Fairy there is really territorial. Go to Moscow. They have great vodka.”

Dad picked up one of the duffel bags, stooping under the weight.

Mom waited until he’d dragged one inside with Hope’s help to speak. “What do your problems have to do with my family?”

“The Black Queen will be looking for people. People I’m angry with. People who hurt me. People I might not have a problem killing.” I let the last bit sink in. “If you ever loved me, take a vacation. If you love Hope, do it for her. You’ll be safe in the domain of another fairy. If I were you, I’d head straight to Portland.”

Then I left them, praying that the next time I came here, it wouldn’t be in the company of evil. We were still in the air when I saw Grimm, reflected from the cockpit window. I nudged Liam awake and opened my compact. “You need something?”

“I need you. I have a feeling I know what my daughter is up to.”

WHEN WE MADE
it back to the Agency that evening, I wasn’t at all surprised to see Ari, Wyatt, and Mrs. Pendlebrook in Grimm’s conference room. Grimm waited until we were seated, then cleared his throat to kill the chatter. “Four hundred years ago I had my daughter beheaded by a prince, torn to pieces by the combined might of Kingdom’s seal bearers, and burned in the infernal flame while I held back her power.”

Grimm paused, looking at me in particular. “While I cannot be certain what else her aims are, I believe she’s taking action to prevent that from occurring again. Her first move was against the Court of Kings, where she quelled the commanders of Kingdom’s military. Her second move was against the High Queen.”

“I’m betting my bitch of a stepmother is her lapdog.” The way Ari spat
stepmother
made
bitch
sound like a term of endearment.

“Whether she does so with my daughter’s blessing or only as her unwilling pawn, the end is the same. I have no doubt Isolde means to keep the court divided long enough to settle other accounts or unified under her loyal servant.”

I counted off on my fingers. “Okay, so the kings are out of play, the queens are busy. What next?”

“She kills any prince foolish enough to be found and destroys Kingdom’s army, lest it be mobilized against her.” Grimm turned toward Wyatt. “She’s already had five princes killed, and no doubt will move against more soon.”

“I have no interest in Kingdom politics.” Wyatt’s voice wavered in fear.

“Given your family’s history, she won’t care. Prince Edward Pendlebrook is a name that she will never forget or forgive. Your ancestor helped me end my daughter’s reign of terror.”

Grimm looked to Liam. “I regret to ask you this, Mr. Stone, but it is essential that whoever is killing these princes does not do away with all of them. I once arranged for you to guard a court of vampires. Now I ask you to guard a single prince.”

Ari put her hand over Wyatt’s. “I can protect him just fine.”

“You are needed elsewhere. I need to focus on completing your training. Mr. Stone—”

“Is staying with Marissa.” Liam’s statement trailed off into a growl.

Grimm shook his head. “Not where I’m asking her to go.” He looked over to me. “My daughter cannot kill you without endangering herself. Were she to release you, she would be open to my full wrath. I ask that you return to her and attempt to find out how she is killing princes. Her arrogance may be her downfall.”

Liam leaped to his feet, his face red. “Or you could just give her what she wants. Have you thought about that? How about you get off your lazy ass and fix this instead of sending everyone else to do your dirty work?”

Grimm looked down at the table. “I have told you that fairies cannot approach each other. That their powers repel. There is, however, a way. I can change myself so that we attract. In essence, we will be irreversibly drawn together in the equivalent of a magical supernova.”

Liam’s grip on me tightened further. “Won’t that hurt Marissa?”

“No, sir,” said Grimm. “As long as the handmaiden’s bond is broken, I believe she will survive. When Marissa is free of my daughter, I will end this myself.”

We sat in stunned silence, all of us waiting for someone else to speak. I finally found my tongue, hanging out of my mouth. “And you die.”

“In a manner of speaking. The resulting entity, given a few billion years, will coalesce into a new fairy. So you see, Mr. Stone, I do intend to do my part.”

Liam stayed standing, stayed focused on Grimm. “And how exactly do we get her free? Did any of the ideas I came up with from the doorman work?”

“You might say so,” said Grimm. “Your visit did give me the key to a possible solution.”

“Me.” Ari sat up, her shoulders back, her mouth set in a straight line. “There is no High Queen. So I challenge my mother, and everyone else, to a duel. When I win, I become High Queen and order the doorman to strip Isolde of her title the same way he did Irina Mihail. That breaks the handmaiden’s bond.”

Mrs. Pendlebrook looked like she’d been slapped. She took off her wire-frame bifocals and studied Ari. “Arianna, while your magic is impressive, I do not believe you are up to the task of taking on every other seal bearer and hired hag in the court.”

“I will be. Grimm is going to teach me Battle Magic.” The ease with which Ari spoke of magic designed to wound and kill made something inside me quiver with fear, and the darkest part of me tremble with excitement.

Grimm’s face clouded over with worry. “For four hundred years I have not taught an apprentice. I can train Arianna in magic no queen of this age has faced.” He glanced over to Ari. “But there will be a cost, princess.”

“I’ll take out a mortgage on the house.”

“Young lady, though you bear the scars of Wild Magic, you are not evil. The sort of spells I will teach you are not the tools of defense. They are designed to rend and maim, to kill and make an example of your victims. To use them willingly against another person will stain you in a way I cannot change.” Grimm’s tone shifted to one I’d never heard, cold and dark, calculating. “Even binding the magic requires sacrifice in a ritual so foul it cannot be spoken of.”

Ari closed her eyes and clenched her fists. “I’ll do what it takes.”

“No.” I slammed the binder of menus we used for long nights down on the table, causing Ari to crackle with lightning. “I won’t let you do something like that to yourself. Not for me.”

“You can’t stop me.”

“Consider your choice, princess.” Grimm’s use of Arianna’s title always infuriated her. “Once Isolde is dead, the other queens will unite against you at the first opportunity. And if you flee, you will be forever an outcast, reduced to hiding in a hovel lest some prince decide to slay you as a weekend hobby.”

Mrs. Pendlebrook raised her hand, looking to each of us to make sure we acknowledged her. “Arianna will always be welcome in my home. If my reasons for taking the throne were so noble, perhaps my Charles would be alive today. Fairy Godfather, can you adapt the wards on my house to protect her?”

My frustration built up like a wave inside me. “You aren’t listening. I’m not some damsel in distress, in need of a prince to rescue me. I’ve been in worse situations before. I’ll handle this.”

Liam spun on me, his face twisted in anger. “What is
wrong
with you? We are trying to make sure you survive.”

I reached out to put my hand on him. “And I am trying to make sure surviving is something I can live with.”

Liam kicked his chair back into the wall and stormed out, smoke pouring from his mouth and nose. I sat, unsure why everyone stared at me. Finally Grimm spoke. “Go after him. He’s taking the elevator to the roof.”

“No rituals.” I spoke to Grimm, but locked gazes with Ari until she looked away. Then I ran for the stairs, praying that a decade of cardio could get me to the roof faster than the balky steel death traps building management called elevators.

I hit the roof escape door right as the elevator chimed, and grabbed Liam the moment the doors opened. He was literally steaming as his body temperature rose to the point of transformation. “Stay. Don’t go flying off.” We’d fought on occasion. It was the only thing that gave his dragon curse enough gumption to actually use the wings.

Liam crossed his arms as he stared. “When you rescued that baby last month, did you blame the mother for setting her down in a patch of flowers full of pixies?”

That wasn’t the question I expected of him. “No.”

“And the couple who had that talking koi in the pond, did they do something wrong?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Liam put his hands on either side of my face, callused hands from hours spent in his studio, swinging hammers. “Every day, every week, every month of the year you’re out solving someone’s problem or saving someone from mistakes. So why can’t you accept that we might want to save you?”

I couldn’t answer. I didn’t have words.

“That
I
might want to save you?” The pain in his voice, the fear, found a partner in my heart.

“I’ve never been the type to be rescued. I don’t know how.”

“You could learn.”

I blinked away tears. “I can’t let Ari do that to herself. You can’t let Ari do that to herself. Grimm, I don’t know about. This all begins with him, maybe it ends with him, but I won’t let Ari harm herself for me.”

“I’m not sure she has to.” Liam’s voice, almost a purr-growl, made me curious who was speaking—Liam, or his curse. “There are other rituals. Other choices, but we’d need time.”

“I can buy you that time. Isolde is scary, but nothing I can’t deal with.”

He wasn’t fooled by my false bravado. He’d never been fooled, not from the moment I met him, somehow seeing through it to the me I worked to keep hidden. “I have a few ideas. I just need time.”

Pulling my compact from my pocket, I flipped it open. Grimm waited there, without even being called. “So how does this work? She isn’t summoning me.”

“Go home. Get some sleep, and tomorrow you can report to her after breakfast. A handmaiden may always approach her queen without being summoned, but you need to be at your best to deal with her.” Grimm faded away, his command given.

Liam put his arm around my shoulder, and together we found our way home and into bed.

•   •   •

I WOKE WITH
a start, unsure what had roused me from my sleep. Beside me, Liam rumbled like a chain saw committing a redwood massacre, wisps of wood smoke tinting his breath as he exhaled. I slipped from the bed. My stomach turned flips and knotted in a feeling almost like the pull when Isolde summoned me before.

I dressed in the dark and, after lacing up my running shoes, slipped out into the three a.m. darkness. The streets are never really empty; the traffic never stops. At night the garbage trucks and delivery vans and construction vehicles come out like vampires and ghosts, afraid of a little sun and a few million people.

I ran without purpose, letting my feet guide me. When they tired, I stepped on board the first bus, losing myself in the swirl of passing lights and gazing out the window, while I worried about how I’d retrieve stolen souls. The Mihails hadn’t been pleasant people in life. I doubted the afterlife improved their dispostions.

More than anything, I worried about how I’d survive the Black Queen. Though Grimm often spoke of how I needed to take care of myself, a nervous excitement flowed into me from Isolde’s manacle.

This foreign feeling reminded me of the time Grimm found a building maintenance firm that would charge us half what we paid before. Something had the Black Queen so pleased her feelings washed over into me, and I doubted it was that she’d found a good deal on shoes.

So I switched buses and rode to the gates of Kingdom. A bare street corner for anyone not associated with magic. More like an interchange for me. Outside the gates, I held my bracelet tight and looked into a shop window. “Grimm. Something’s going on with the Black Queen. I can feel it.”

He appeared, a faint reflection of his normal splendor, blotting out the “SALE PRICES” writing in the window. “Has she summoned you again?”

“No. But I feel something. Something exciting, or happy.” The possibilities that could excite the Black Queen made my stomach churn.

“You are bonded to her, and it stands to reason that the bond works both ways. Do not show her fear or respect, Marissa. She is due neither, but do not provoke her without reason. I will let you pass the gates unassisted.” Grimm held out his arm toward the street corner where the gates split Kingdom from the city.

I ran for them, head-on, straight through them, as a maelstrom of darkness and shadow burst outward, coating the city streets with oil and transforming the streetlamps into torture chambers where unlucky pixies burned, lighting the way into Low Kingdom.

Behind me, the gates stood barred, covered in sharp glass and thorns. I had no intention of leaving that way. My biggest worry were the denizens of Low Kingdom. Early morning was like nine a.m. for the hags and hangmen.

The streets of Low Kingdom stood empty. Only the occasional bat flittered from building to building. No drunken carousing, no screaming in the night as creatures devoured one another.

With each step, my feet crushed broken glass, the loudest noise in the city. The crawling feeling like a roach on the back of my neck said I wasn’t alone. I just couldn’t see whoever kept me company. So I planned a distraction. After rummaging through a trash mound, I took out a liquor bottle and hurled it far down the street. The darkness swallowed it, but the crash of breaking glass echoed. If whatever kept me company didn’t know where I was already, it would head for the noise.

Like the patter of distant rain, footsteps rushed my way. Too late, I spotted the third-story windows, where faces pressed against the windows. Hags watched below with fear in their eyes. Not looking at me, but at the darkness beyond.

I backed up against the nearest building, where fingernails and molars jutted from the brick, keeping my eyes on the intersection ahead.

The monster that emerged from the darkness galloped on six feet, springing along like a cheetah. Its malformed body consisted of six legs grafted onto a torso. The pale white flesh might once have belonged to a human, but no man had that many pelvises. The shoulders jutted outward, hosting arms laced with thick muscle that ended in hairy hand-feet like a gorilla.

I held very still, hoping it couldn’t see me.

It hissed, bare teeth jutting from a jaw without lips, snorting air into a nose without cartilage. The neck, what remained, had fused together, locking the head forward, so it had to twist its entire body to look from side to side.

Then it stopped, staring into the darkness.

If I’d tried to run, I would have died on the spot. Instead, I turned around and climbed, using the brick edges as handholds to pull myself up. At the first story, I grabbed the fire escape, ignoring the mangled bodies that hung from it, and swung myself on.

Below, on the street, the abomination skittered back and forth like a hairy cockroach. Unable to look upward, it couldn’t stare at me, but I figured it knew full well where I’d gone. It lunged forward, hands grasping at the brick, gradually turning itself upward, until it fixed me with a dead gaze.