J. Nelson - Free Agent

“You found Mr. Sniffers? How is he?” I was both elated and terrified by this.

“Flat.” Ari put down the magazine to look at me, which bugged me since I had to keep my eyes on the road. “What kind of life did you think you had?”

I glanced in the rearview mirror at Liam, wondering why Ari chose now to bring this up. Then I realized I didn’t have any dignity left where he was concerned. “I didn’t worry about now. I kept thinking about when I’d be done, princess.” I didn’t need to say that dream was gone. I might one day talk to my parents, but things would never be the same now that I knew.

Ari watched out the window as the dairy lands rolled past, and my stomach felt heavy with guilt. I knew how she hated to be reminded of her title. I risked taking my eyes off the road long enough to look her in the eye. “I’m sorry. I always thought there’d be something for me beyond this.”

Ari reached over and took my hand and squeezed it until I was sure my bones would crack. “Then make something. You never told me what your name was. Your real name.”

I thought about it a moment. Marissa Lambert didn’t fit me anymore. I didn’t even want their name. Not now that I knew the truth. Even thinking about it made me sick. I wasn’t going to cry in front of Liam. “Locks. My name is Marissa Locks.”

Ari narrowed her eyes and frowned. “That’s the name he gave you.”

“No, it’s the name I’m taking for myself. It’ll save me a fortune in monogramming and a trip to the DMV. It’s my name now. Grimm can call his new girls something else.” I cut the wheel and slid onto the dirt roads.

“Here?” asked Ari, recognizing the smokehouses, and I nodded.

“Where is ‘here’?” asked Liam.

“Wolf town,” I said. “Stay in the car.”

We got out. Wolf town still stank of rotten meat and death, but I knew we weren’t alone from the moment my shoes hit the gravel. A few of the smokehouses were going, trails of ash winding from their chimneys into the sky.

“Careful,” I told Ari, “I don’t want to piss them off if I can help it.” The car door opened behind me and I heard Liam step out. “I said to stay in the car.”

He walked up behind me so close I could smell the wood smoke on him, that scent he always had. “I’ve been twisted into a yoga position for the last hour. If I don’t stretch, I’m going to die of a blood clot.”

“Wolves,” I yelled, my own voice echoing back, “I’m not here for trouble. I want to find out what happened.” In the shadows I heard footsteps and paws on gravel. My arm ached with the memory of my bargaining trip.

“Look out,” said Ari, and I saw a wolf come running out from between the buildings on all fours, at full speed, straight for Liam. Why it was the thugs always went for the man I didn’t know, but I was ready this time. I shot it in the stomach. I aimed for the chest but wolves run fast.

Liam looked more than a little queasy at the spray of blood. “When you said wolf town, I didn’t think you meant wolves.”

“Keep an eye on that one.” I waited, listening to the sound of cows in the distance.

Liam waved to me. “Hey, um, you might want to—Oh, crap.” His eyes grew wide and his jaw went slack. The wolf continued to morph, growing longer, skinnier, and uglier. Liam took another nervous step away and backed into me. “Werewolf?”

“Just wolf.” I went over to have a talk. “I said I’m here to look.”

The wolf pushed the bullet out of the wound, and it dropped into the gravel. “You’re back to kill us. Back to finish what you started.”

I shook my head. “If I wanted to kill you, I’d have packed silver or maybe the flamethrower. I need to look around. You wolves leave me and my friends alone, we’ll take the unguided tour and leave, okay? If you’d waited, I would have offered you a trade.”

I walked back to the car and returned with my plastic bags.

“What is this?” asked the wolf.

“Every piece of beef jerky in the store, lunch meat, and two cans of bacon bits. We didn’t have time to go to the pig farm.”

He sniffed it and looked at the label. “There’s a month’s worth of sodium in one of these. You are trying to kill us.”

“Take it or leave it. We want to look.”

The wolf rose and snarled at me. “How about I carve something better out of you?”

I stood my ground. I needed to figure things out, and I was certain this was the place. “You don’t want to do that.” I looked at Liam. “He’s cursed. Take the wrong bite and you might wind up with it too. I drink so much caffeine my blood should be a controlled substance, and I eat so much junk food I’m considered an additive by the FDA.”

The wolf looked at Ari. “She looks tasty.”

“Princess.”

He spat on the ground in disgust and opened a can of bacon bits. Once he’d consumed the can, the wolf grinned at me with almost human teeth, baring them in a smile that looked all too hungry. “Next time bring pigs.”

I went back and shut the trunk. Ari came up behind me and grabbed my shoulder. “Why didn’t he want to eat me?” She almost sounded upset.

I patted her on the back. “I’ve heard princesses taste like gym socks boiled in iodine. Didn’t you ever wonder why the dragon never eats the princess?”

She sniffed her hand and tentatively touched her tongue to the back of it. I went back to the wolf. “How did the fae child wind up here?” I took the safety off the gun for emphasis.

“A gift. Payment.” He backed away, none too eager to get another bullet.

“For what?”

“Figure it out yourself, Red.”

I wish I’d picked something else to wear on my first visit. I turned away from the wolf. “Come on.” Liam followed me. I went to the bar first, trying to figure out what it was that had bothered me so much last time.

“So what are we looking for?” asked Liam as we walked across the street.

I opened the door and a plague’s worth of flies flew out. The inside smelled like someone had combined a morgue and a Crock-Pot. “I don’t know.”

He left what little food he’d eaten in a puddle at the door. I walked through the bar as my eyes adjusted to the dim lights. Each step sent tornados of flies up behind me. At the back, I swiped a glass and the nearest bottle.

Liam came along, trying to dodge flies. I held out a glass. “Drink?”

He mumbled something through his sleeve as I wiped a fly from my glass. I’m fairly sure it was something along the lines of “How can you drink in here?”

“You get used to it. Not my first massacre cleanup.”

He took the drink and managed to down most of it.

I looked over the bar at the dead bartender. “They were just sitting here. Drinking their beer, watching the game. The fae came in and killed them all.” I took a closer look at the bodies closest to me. Like those by the door, their skin lay in crumpled heaps near the wall.

Liam still looked sick, so I grabbed a bowl of peanuts from the end of the bar. “Take a handful of peanuts. It’ll help calm your stomach and keep the smell out of your nose.”

He looked at the bowl in the dim light, and sniffed it.

“I ate at Froni’s with you. This place couldn’t possibly be any dirtier. Have a peanut.”

He took one out and chewed it, then choked, spit it out, and wretched over the bar. “Not a peanut. I think it was an earlobe.” After a moment, he regained control of his stomach. “What does this?” He managed to speak and cover his mouth at the same time, as he gestured to the bodies.

“Fae magic. Big white beam of death. Solid concrete would stop it, but most buildings around here are cinderblock or wood. They cast it from the door and killed everyone.”