J. Nelson - Free Agent

“Do all the places you go smell like this?” asked Ari. Wherever she grew up, hideous stenches didn’t make too many guest appearances.

“No, most of them smell worse.” Inside, the machinery still hummed as though at any moment it would start up. The huge ceiling lights flickered. I sniffed and decided I’d smelled much, much worse. I once took care of an ogre with irritable bowel syndrome after he raided a Thai buffet.

Liam pointed to a vat. “Rotten bread dough.” From the oven line, I smelled the char-burned smell of wasted loaves. I heard something moving, a shuffling sound that became the patter of running feet.

Liam heard it too, and even Ari stopped her humming and backed slowly toward us.

From behind a row of ovens, a man in white leaped. Flour covered him from head to toe like a ghost, but blood ran from his mouth, and as he came, he screamed.

I swore at myself for not having my gun out. The man leaped over a stack of pallets, his arms flailing toward me, his eyes wide and empty.

Liam caught him with a gut punch. Liam was taller than me, thicker, and he had a blacksmith’s arms. He about punched through the man, smashing his fist deep into the man’s stomach like so much dough.

Ari stared at the man, and started squinting, even though I knew she had her contacts in. She took off at a run straight for him, shouting, “Get back! Don’t touch him.”

Liam ignored her and stepped on the man’s chest, pinning him. Ari pushed on Liam, like a flea trying to move a bulldozer. She put her hands on the side of Liam’s face, forcing him to look at her. “Can’t you feel it?”

I dragged a fifty-pound bag of flour across the man, and as I stepped over him he tried to bite me.

“Get back,” said Ari, pulling at my arm. She had a tone I’d never heard from her before. She leaned closer, looking at his face. Blood caked his mouth and ran from his eyes. “You,” she said to me, “keep an eye out for others. Beefy, you go get another bag of flour. And don’t let him touch you.”

I pulled my gun, scanning rows of assembly lines. “Want to explain what I’m looking for?”

Ari put her hand on the man’s forehead. “Others. He’s probably killed them all by now, but if there are others, it would be bad.” She knelt on the man’s wrist so he couldn’t scratch her.

I watched the empty floor, stealing occasional glances at her. “You said no touching.”

“You’re not a princess, and Liam’s not a prince. It won’t affect me the same way. It’s magic. Some sort of poison.” Her voice had this weird echo to it as she spoke, and the magic that drifted off of her looked like a snowstorm.

Liam lumped a couple more bags on the man’s legs and arms. “Is everyone around here crazy?”

I could live with his anger at me, maybe. I didn’t feel like letting him direct it at Ari. “She’s not crazy. She’s a princess and the seal bearer for her house. She’s also my friend.”

“How long were you hired to be her friend for? What the hell is she doing?”

Ari knelt over the man. I recognized the feeling of static electricity that swept across me. A wind whipped through the bakery, sending tiny tornadoes of flour spinning, but Ari wasn’t paying any attention. With an ease that made me nervous, she gathered her power.

She held her hand over his head and closed her eyes. A green mist seeped from his nose and mouth, forming a cloud above him. The mist solidified, taking the form of her family crest for a moment, and then the wind rushed in and tore it away. Ari fell over, crumpling to the ground.

The man opened his eyes. “Where am I?”

I ignored him, rolling Ari over. She was breathing, thank goodness.

“What did you do?” I asked, brushing her hair out of her eyes.

She tried to sit up. “He was poisoned. I took it out.” When she made the foxfire, it took her days to feel better. Either she was getting better at magic or curing poison wasn’t as hard, because she didn’t look like death this time. Sweat rolled down her face and her hair clung to her face. If I’d known that magic was that much of a workout, I’d have said forget the laps, and made her sling spells.

“Where am I?” the man asked again.

“You’re in a bakery,” said Liam, “and that stuff on your mouth and face is blood.”

The man’s hands went to his face. His fingers ended in bloody stubs where he’d torn the fingernails out. His crusted lips quivered as he spoke. “Accident. There was an accident.”

“What happened?” I asked, leaning over him.

“Too many hours straight, I told them. Too dangerous, but they insisted. She said a war was coming.”

Ari failed to get up for the fourth time. “I need to rest.”

Liam walked over and hoisted her like a two-penny nail. He carried her over to the office. Plenty of nice chairs in there, for sure.

I held up my phone. It showed a picture of the heart seeker, coiled up lifeless on Grimm’s desk. “I’m looking for something.”

His eyes went wide. “I didn’t know you worked for her. Please don’t hurt me. Just take them and go. They are in the kitchen.” With his free hand, he pointed to a small kitchen where they tested dough before large-scale production.

Inside, the stench of rotten food and something wet and dark filled the air. Where the light cut in from the doorway, a hand lay, smeared in blood. I felt for the light and clicked it on. I caught my breath. Bodies lay scattered across the floor, but I’d seen a lot of bodies, and that didn’t bother me anymore. On the center island stood a baker’s rack, and on every level were rows and rows of apples.

Now, you might be tempted to think I had an allergy to apples, or I considered myself more of a citrus girl, but those apples were only related to fruit in the same way a hand grenade was related to a pineapple. They oozed magic. It took every ounce of will I had to avoid touching one.

Apples went out of style as weaponry about four hundred years ago, at least. See, until the invention of the explosive shell, you had to convince your enemy to actually take a bite. It only took one or two times of seeing a prince turned to applesauce that people started eating oranges instead.

The invention of the explosive candy shell was supposed to be the next big thing, but by that time there were easier ways to kill people. Only witches and hags still considered apples a decent form of self-defense, because of who they most often used them against: each other.

Poison apples worked best against those with magic in them. The explosions made hamburger out of a normal person. If you had a protection spell, the goo the apple scattered ate away at the spell, and then snacked on the person. The more magic, the better it worked, unless you were a princess, of course. For them, the worst thing that happened if they ate a poisoned apple was they got to take a nap. Those girls got all the breaks.

I took a few steps farther in, checking the other bodies. The smell nearly overwhelmed me.

Liam came to the door and stood looking at the carnage. He’d obviously never seen death firsthand. He recoiled, forcing his eyes closed, with an awful grimace. People only did that the first five or six times they saw a massacre. “What the hell happened in here?”

“You might want to stay back.” I opened my compact and called Grimm. “You probably want to see this.”

His eyes appeared in the compact and I moved it around so he could get a full view. Grimm spoke with authority, his voice deeper, his tone grave. “Marissa, get out of there. I will call the hazmat team immediately. Don’t let anyone into the building.”

I closed the compact, and that’s when the feeling hit. The feeling of being watched, like I had at the ball. “Where are you?” I shouted to the empty room. The whole place was stainless steel, where it wasn’t spattered with blood. “I know you’re watching.” I felt a hand on my wrist and nearly broke Liam’s nose.