J. Nelson - Free Agent

As usual for this kind of assignment, I brought backup, though more of the staple-slinging than the gunslinging sort. He was a by-the-hour, by-the-book sack of slime named Frank. We approached the brownstone and I felt it right away. It wasn’t the subtle shift of my Agency bracelet. The place actually looked creepy. From the swing out front that kept rocking itself to the wind that played with my hair at the entrance to the courtyard and nowhere else.

“You ready?” I asked Frank.

He straightened his black-and-white suit. “Not entirely, but one never is. Remind me sometime and I’ll tell you about the first one of these I ever did.”

“Not while you are on the clock. Grimm’s orders.” Like most of the contractors, Frank worked hourly, which was nice, since Grimm didn’t have to give him medical and dental. I knocked on the front door and it swung open slightly.

“I’m Marissa Locks, here on behalf of the Fairy Godfather. I’d like to talk this over,” I said to the empty hallway. “Give you a chance to go peacefully, uh, wherever it is you need to go.”

The building gasped as if it were waking up and taking a few breaths.

“Into the light. Tell it to go into the light.” Frank gave me a thumbs-up for encouragement. The estate management firm we were handling this for didn’t care where it went, so long as it stopped gobbling up anyone who stepped inside.

I glared at Frank until he looked away. Once he shut his mouth I turned my attention back to the task at hand. “All right. You had your chance, now we do it the hard way.”

The door swung wide, inviting me in. I stepped away. Grimm and I had played “spot the horror movie goof” for the first eight months I worked for him, and one does not ever go through a door that opens on its own. For that matter, if your cat is down in the basement, you don’t go looking for it either. The cat has four legs with which to climb out on its own.

“Sic ’em,” I said.

Frank approached the door, stapler in hand. He pinned a dozen papers to the doorway and stepped back.

I signed the summons and stuck it to the door frame. “I’ll see you in thirty days.”

As we started to leave, every window in the building opened and slammed shut. The doorway flung itself wide and out of the darkness rushed a form of blackness wrapped in rage, clothed in bitterness. “What?” That one word took at least five syllables. That’s long enough for the entire goblin constitution.

“Those papers constitute legal notice that I am beginning the eviction process. I had them notarized, and since I don’t think ghosts sleep, you’ve got plenty of time to review the terms and conditions. Should you decide to accept a peaceful transition, contact Fairy Godfather by ether-net.” I finished the usual spiel and started to walk away. Beyond the threshold of its house, it couldn’t do much more than yell at me.

It put a claw to the dried jawbone that formed its chin and thought for a moment. “Exorcism,” it said, hissing as it did.

I’d had this argument before. “Eviction. Cheaper and faster. Meet Frank Cole. Frank’s under retainer and specializes in property law. So, take your time, read up on your rights, and when I come back in thirty days, we’ll work this one of two ways. Method number one,” I drew a line in the air for emphasis, “you leave voluntarily. You go wherever it is liches go when they aren’t haunting property that isn’t legally theirs. I hire a hazmat team to come in and clean up the mess you left behind. Trust me, judging from the smell, it’s a mess.”

It reached out for me with skeletal fingers, cold seeping off of it.

“Method number two involves accidentally delivering a truckload of salt to the place, accidentally burning the whole damn thing down, and salting the entire lot all the way up to where those nice surveyors placed the pretty little flags.”

The lich slowly withdrew its hands, fixing me with glowing eyes that were meant to induce nightmares. I waited, humming softly to myself, until an exasperated groan whistled through its jaws.

“I’ve gotten scarier things than you from carnival games. Move out.” When I last looked back it was haunting the doorstep, probably trying to figure out what “rights of remainder” meant. Frank wasn’t a priest, but he passed his bar.

Grimm didn’t mind working with the odd hangman or executioner. You know, respectable professions. Lawyers, on the other hand, Grimm couldn’t stand, so it always fell to me. Frank was fine in my book. He worked for greenbacks, and he knew his way around the property code. In my book that made him not only magical, but damn near a wizard.

BACK AT THE Agency, Evangeline had struck gold, if an empty pie box fished from a Dumpster could be considered gold. It was a sad comment on my life that I was excited to see it. Grimm already had it put into the Visions Room. The Visions Room was weird even by Agency standards. For those of us without the Sight, it worked like a little window into the spirit world. Prisms covered each wall, and I couldn’t go in there without getting nauseous. Grimm checked for traces of what had been in the box.

“Curse.” Evangeline mouthed the word so as not to bring down the wrath of Grimm.

“I can read lips in sixteen languages, you know,” said Grimm.

I looked through the window. “Fifteen. Pig Latin is not a language.”

“Tell that to the Three Little Pigs. If I can deliver Christmas Mass in it, it’s a language.”

I gave up. “So what is it? And don’t bother saying a pie box.”

Grimm gave me a look of contempt. “I’d say it’s a pie box, but that’s because you asked the wrong question. The right question, my dear, is ‘what was in it?’ Be precise.”

“A curse,” I said.

He shook his head. “A curse shell. So a curse can move about in daylight and even cross the midnight boundary without evaporating.”

“You said there aren’t any real curses anymore,” said Evangeline, “and any time I thought I was working against a curse, all I had to do was remember people are clever, people are resourceful, and people are a thousand times nastier than curses.”

“That’s sound advice, my lady,” said Grimm, “and you would do well to keep it in mind, but there is no point in pretending it is not what we believe. It is a curse. Even more, it is an old curse, of a type rarely used even when they were common.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, “the fae blessings, they’re like a curse, right?”

Grimm nodded.

“So why don’t they need a shell to follow me around? Why don’t they evaporate at midnight?”

“Marissa, didn’t I send you to college for four long years?” asked Grimm.

He knew the answer was yes, which meant he wasn’t interested in the answer. They did need a shell to keep safe, they had to. Then it hit me. “They’ve already got one.” Me.

“Clever girl,” said Grimm.

I think I should have asked the Fae Mother about the fine print before I accepted.

“Enough pining about bad decisions, my dear,” said Grimm. “I consider the question of what was aimed at the prince closed. The next order of business is to determine exactly what was aimed at the prince.” If this was another of Grimm’s “think it throughs,” he’d lost me, or maybe I’d slept through that lecture.

“Why are we doing this?” I asked, “You don’t usually do things out of the goodness of your heart.” Thing was, I was certain there was goodness at times.

“I haven’t trained either of you in spell craft, you know,” said Grimm, turning away from the mirror. The bald spot on the back of his head reminded me of a bowling ball. “And that was not an accident on my part. I believe magic is most powerful when it supplements your natural strengths, not when it replaces them.” He didn’t bother adding that magic-and-Marissa was almost always a disaster. “This kind of curse, this method of delivering it, is beyond even the Black Queen. It bears the mark of another fairy.”