Armageddon Rules (31 page)

“About two hundred pounds, I’d guess.”

Mikey turned to Beth. “Do you like sashimi? Or tuna fish salad?”

“Did you say mermaid?” Beth looked past him, to me.

“All I’m asking for is an open mind and an open mouth. Fresh-cut sashimi is like nothing you’ve ever had. We can feed the bones to the poodles. Give me twenty minutes, and ignore any screaming you might hear.” Mikey practically ran down the hall to the lobby.

When Beth finally got her poodles locked away, I took her with me out to the stairs, where I climbed leisurely to the top of the building. “You worry me. Getting all friendly with those things is a good recipe for winding up poodle-chow.” I reached into my purse and found the bag of plague sand.

“I like them. They’re cuter than rats, and they keep the salesmen away.”

I glowered at her, then tossed a handful of plague sand into the wind. “It’s done.” I made a mental note to get Larry another soul or two, for good advice, then looked at Beth. “Go back downstairs.”

Once I heard the roof-access door close, I called. “Malodin. Your second plague is done.” My call echoed, lost in the sound of the city. A soft pattering swept across the city, like rain moving in. Something wet struck my arm. A maggot crawled there as other patters struck my head.

I ran.

Straight for the air-conditioning unit, which I huddled underneath as the sky opened up and it poured maggots. For almost a minute, a gully washer of biblical proportions struck the city. Then it stopped, leaving a moment of strange silence. A layer of maggots thick enough for the sole of my foot to sink into squirmed on top of the building

I’d learned all about omens from Grimm. Some were easy to read. “You are ordered to appear before the court” meant that you had a date with a district attorney in your future. Some were near impossible to divine. If a flock of birds moving south stopped early for the night, Grimm could tell who would win the lottery tomorrow. I could tell it would be a good idea to move my car out from under them. Maggots, however, were a special kind of omen. One that foretold the arrival of demons. And I knew exactly which demon would be coming to gloat.

The maggots began to move, piling together into a mound that rose higher and higher, then compressed inward, taking on the form of something inhuman. With a thunderclap, the mound exploded. Only Malodin remained where it had stood. When I first met him, he resembled an impossibly thin man. Now he looked like a man crossed with a praying mantis. As he walked across the roof toward me, his knees alternated bending forward and backwards, and his shoulders hunched from side to side with each step.

“Handmaiden, what have you graced us with?”

“Blood.” I was so glad I didn’t wear sandals to work that day.

Malodin nodded, satisfied. “A proper plague, straight out of the book. My father will be pleased. Did you smite their drinking water? Their liquor? Their coffee?”

The thought of the entire city going through caffeine withdrawal at once gave me shivers worse than a mountain of maggots. “Not exactly. Every woman for one hundred miles just started her period.”

Malodin stopped scratching at the open sore on his head to stare at me. “You promised us agony and misery.”

I stood my ground. “You’ve never had cramps or the joys of fourteen straight days on the rag. Every woman in this city is going through a week’s worth of PMS in the next ten minutes. The murder rate will double in the next three hours. Enjoy your plague.”

“You will not mock me.” Malodin’s voice took on an eerie resonance, and his chin quivered as he spat each word. “Your final plague must unleash terror and violence, handmaiden.” Malodin stalked toward me, then stumbled as a stream of maggots burst from his mouth. “No, Father. Not until my contract is fulfilled.” He stared at the ground as he spoke, then took another lurch toward me, covering far too much distance with one step.

“I will have my apocalypse. You will do it for me, and I will be prince among demons once again.” As he spoke, maggots squirmed like tears from Malodin’s eyes. Then he dissolved, crackling like cellophane, and collapsing into a wet mess.

*   *   *

DOWNSTAIRS IN THE Agency, I found most of the staff gathered in the kitchen, where Mikey spun a pair of blades. He wore a white apron and a chef’s hat, and what was left of the largest tuna I’d ever seen graced our counter.

“Marissa, cupcake?” He handed me a tray from the counter, taking one for himself.

A flavor like rich dark chocolate cascaded down my throat, and the candy sprinkles on top perfectly complemented the buttercream frosting. “These are fantastic. You should be a baker.”

“I prefer barbecue.” Mikey handed me another one. “I took the sprinkles from your desk.”

I spewed out cupcake, choking on the bits that I now recognized. “Jar on my desk?”

Mikey swallowed his cupcake whole. “Yup. I ran out of colored ones, but these give it a crunch.”

“Those are my birth control pills.” Bought in bulk, a container of more than ten thousand of them. Not normally found on cupcakes.

Mikey looked queasy for a moment, then frowned. He reached over on the counter and pulled the container that usually sat in my lower drawer. Taking one from it, he put it on the end of his tongue, then chewed it thoughtfully. “Sugar, iron, and red number five. If that keeps humans from getting pregnant, you’d have gone extinct fifty years ago.”

I stood still as a rock, almost ready to scream, cry, or shoot someone. Definitely shoot someone. The problem was, the person I wanted to shoot existed on the other side of the mirror, and the only person I could shoot at the moment, I didn’t want to.

I slipped into a chair at the kitchenette, silent, trying to ignore the looks from our staff.

“Here. Try a California roll.” Mikey pushed his hat back on top of his head and held out a platter. “I can make it into a Kentucky roll, if you’d like.”

I didn’t want to eat. In fact, I felt like puking, which sushi almost always did for me. “I’ll try a Kentucky roll.”

Mikey put one on a plate, then doused it in a bottle of whiskey. “Helps smooth the burn.”

After my third or fourth Kentucky roll, I felt better. Better about accidentally starting the end of the world. Better about the plague thing. Every pigeon in the city could barely fly, stuffed from devouring maggots, and I was in no shape to drive. So I went back to my office and had Rosa send in both enchanters.

“Listen.” My tongue didn’t quite work right, on account of that tuna. “I need you to find something.” Something, schomething, I was fairly certain they got my gist. I flipped open the book on Fairy Godfather, browsed past the image of him creating the duck-billed platypus, and found what I was looking for.

My guess is that at the time it was done, the drawing was considered high art. I knew of a day care where I could get kindergartners to produce drawings like this all day for nothing but a bag of marshmallows. It showed a wide beam of light entering a prism and a narrow beam coming out.

I tapped the drawing. “Focus point. Find it.” The two of them shuffled out. Bath slippers were hardly business casual, but I was in no mood to complain.

It might have been an hour or two, or maybe a minute before someone woke me. “M?”

I looked up, and in my doorway stood Ari, dressed in a green suit. “How did you get here?” I tried to stand, a little unsteady. That’s the point at which I noticed the sunglasses. Ari wore solid black sunglasses. Beside her, Yeller slunk, wearing a guide-dog harness and looking like an extremely embarrassed demonic dog.

“I took the bus. If you wear glasses, people can’t tell if you’re blind.” Ari walked in and gave me a hug.

“You should have a white cane. We’ll order you one.”

Ari stiffened when I spoke. “How many Kentucky rolls did you eat? I had a cane, I broke it over the head of a man who thought I couldn’t see exactly what he was doing. If he tries that again, I’m going to have Yeller play balls.”

“I thought you wanted time off.” I rummaged through my desk and swallowed a mint breath strip or ten.

“So I can sit at home and stare in the mirror? So I can replay Wyatt running away from me?”

“Can you see? I mean, what can you see?” I didn’t really want to pry, but Ari was like my sister. I’d have answered her if our places were reversed.

“I can see. It’s like everything’s lit by moonlight. And the spirits. You wouldn’t believe how many spells, curses, ghosts. They’re everywhere. I can even see souls if I look hard enough.” For the first time, a smile crossed her face. Trust Ari to find something beautiful regardless.

“I’m going to Wyatt’s house. Going to tell him exactly what I think of him running off like that. Then I’m going to go fix whatever happened to Grimm, and tell him what I think of him. That son of a bitch better help you, and then he owes me some answers.”

“There’s not going to be a fix for this, M.” Ari’s tone became cold, serious. She stared at me. “The Fae Mother said this would happen. You can’t any more remove this than you can your own scars.”

“Grimm lied to me. I didn’t have an appointment at the clinic in Kingdom. Mikey says the pills he got me are candy.” A tear found its way down my cheek.

Ari came over and put her arm around me, offering me comfort, when I should have been the one comforting her. “Are you upset because you could have gotten pregnant? Or worried that you haven’t?”

“Yes? No? Both? Mostly, I’m
ticked
. Grimm always thinks he knows best, but this is one decision he had no right to make.” I forced my head up and ratcheted my tears into anger that would fuel my drive to find Grimm.

“Did you know your piper’s playing fetch with a poodle? Seriously.” I let Ari’s change of subject slide, since it brought a smile to her face and reminded me of her old self. “You think Grimm will still let me work?”

As far as I was concerned, it didn’t matter. The Agency was mine. “Let’s ask.” I opened Echo’s case and turned him on.

“I can still confirm you are Marissa, my dear. How may I be of service?”

The words that came out of Ari’s mouth weren’t remotely appropriate for a princess. I’m not one hundred percent certain they were appropriate for our cargo guys. She picked the case up, looking under and behind it. “What is this?”

“Who. Meet Echo. He’s like a sliver of Grimm. Speaking of which, Echo, what exactly are my birth control pills?” I reached out to thump the screen, and he folded his arms.

“I’m certain from the question you know the answer. I’m delighted to tell you that the
why
was not something Fairy Godfather considered during my creation.” His eyes flicked to the Power button, expecting me to slam it off. No way was he getting off that easily.

I handed the case to Ari. “Echo will answer your questions. In the meantime, I’m going to go check with those enchanters to see how my project is going.”

“Grimm?” Ari’s mouth opened as he nodded.

“I am a recording of—”

“Everything Grimm thought of for a couple of seconds,” I finished.

Ari slid the briefcase into her lap. “Echo. Will Grimm let a creature of evil work for him?”

“He allows a wolf to work for him. Young lady, consider that the number of homeless in the vicinity of the Agency has only gone down since Michael came to work, and I believe you are fine. Though, may I ask how you came to such a conclusion?” Echo’s tone had that same annoying factor Grimm always did.

“I’m a witch. Can’t you see what my eyes look like?” Ari gripped the case in frustration.

“I can indeed see. So it seems that Fairy Godfather’s suspicions were correct. The wounds on your soul from Wild Magic were in fact too severe to heal.” Echo nodded to himself, as if checking off a grocery list.

Ari trembled, making crackling noises as static electricity made her hair stand up.

“Ask him anything you don’t need a good answer to.” I turned to walk out, then glanced over my shoulder. “Echo, what am I going to find at the focus point?”

He kept it together, almost, nearly. I’d worked with the Fairy Godfather for years, been through wars and massacres and audits. The look on Echo’s face, I recognized. Fear.

Twenty-Seven

MY ENCHANTERS. ENCHANTRESSES? Enchanters and enchantresses? My homeless magic workers hunched over a contraption that looked more like a mousetrap combined with a surgical kit than a tool for magic. They’d scrounged desk toys, at least one pacemaker, and it looked like every calculator in the Agency. Also, my enchanters were no longer allowed to play with crayons. The entire room was covered in runes. Badly written runes, primarily because they were written in crayon.

“Tell me something good, and I’ll order pizza.”

“We know the answer.” My enchanter held out a scroll to me. “Next time ask something hard.”

I unrolled it, finding a set of seven runes. “Translation?”

He suddenly developed a bad case of lice, itching his head uncontrollably. Okay, truth was he’d probably had them all along, but he chose now to go into an itching fit.

“How do I use this?”

Now I had them both sneezing, itching, or finding any reason not to look me in the eye.