Armageddon Rules (24 page)

I glanced at the top of the pile and resigned myself to necessity.

“She really can’t stand you.” Beth held her kazoo while she shut the door.

“She really can’t stand anyone. You know, as surly as Rosa is, Fairy Godfather told me once she’s married and has six kids. She’s right, this can’t wait.” I pulled the top sheet and read it over. “Inspection Report,” it read. When I finished it, I clicked my pen and signed my name, authorizing payment.

Then I went on to the next one, and the next. After a few minutes, I realized Beth hadn’t played a note in quite a while. She watched me take another form, so I passed one in her direction. “These are reports. Fairy Godfather funds a chain of drug-recovery houses for women, and orphanage/foster homes. Fail to meet code, or his requirements, and the operators probably don’t get a paycheck.”

Beth sat down in the chair beside me. “I was in foster care. Bounced from home to home, because of the rats. I wonder if it was one of yours.”

“I can find out. Don’t recall ever having a rodent-related inspection failure, and I’ve reviewed these for the last five years. Didn’t you say you had a mom and dad?”

Beth looked down at the table. “They adopted me when I was fourteen. Dad never said anything about the rats, and Mom just set traps everywhere. I ran away when they started getting sick from the rats.” She frowned as a thought fought off silver poisoning to make it through her brain. “Why do you need orphanages?”

We got that kind of question a lot. “Fairy Godfather is powerful, but one of the most common wishes is one that can’t be granted by magic. People want kids. They want a baby and think you can wish one into existence.”

“You can’t?”

“It takes nine months of hard work, or so I’ve heard. And you don’t need magic. There are plenty of people who don’t want their children, and plenty of people who do. We try to hook the two up.” A lump formed in my throat as I spoke. I wanted a child to love. One to cherish, more than anything I’d wanted in years. I would be the family I wished I had, and love my son or daughter the way my parents should have loved me.

Beth’s voice came out hollow when she spoke. “You don’t know what it’s like, not knowing where you come from.”

“I do.” I wasn’t much of one for self-pity, or pity of any type. Compassion, I could do, because it came with action. “My first mom and my dad came to Fairy Godfather for a child. Odds are, I was born in one of these, probably this one, based on what I’ve found.” I held up a report paper.

“You ever wonder about who your real mother was?”

“I know who my real mother was. She was the woman who was there when I was sick. When I had six hours of homework. When I got my first period. I never knew my dad’s first wife, but his second one raised me.” I didn’t mention that Mom had traded me for a miracle to Fairy Godfather. Or that we still weren’t on speaking terms.

“Do you think I might turn out to be a long-lost princess?”

I spat coffee out in a spray, burning my nose as I laughed. “Listen. Did you ever think that maybe there’s a reason the lost princess stays lost? It’s because people don’t really want to find them. If I lose my car keys, you can bet I’ll figure out where they are. Then again, I like my car keys and would feel bad if someone took them.”

“What is your problem with princesses? Jealous?” Beth tried giving me a sassy, taunting look. She really needed to work on it because her “sassy” looked a lot like my “ate too much curry” look.

“I’m not jealous. It’s just frustrating. Princesses get everything easy. Luck goes their way. Men swoon over them. Cops let them off with a warning, and robbers say please and thank you when they take their wallet. Princes don’t work for anything, and they expect you to fall into their arms and onto their bed at the blink of an eye.”

“I think it might be fun.”

I assembled my papers and rose. “I think I’ll get more done in my office. If you get to the point where you can put your hand in the cage without needing stitches, call me.”

*   *   *

BY LUNCHTIME, I’D signed every single report, issued only six warnings, and been called out to the lobby to personally deal with a man who insisted he had seven dwarves living in his house. Turns out, he had seven cats, and what he needed wasn’t a princess (I was fresh out of those) but animal control. Animal control was an acceptable solution in my mind if it turned out to actually be dwarves as well.

While I ate tuna salad, I wished more than anything that I could talk to Liam. Even after he’d been cursed, his calm and patient nature continued to act as a balance for me. I knew what he’d say. That I’d find a way. That I could buy, borrow, or steal something to put an end to this mess.

He’d say he loved me, and I wanted to hear that more than anything.

The last thing I wanted was for Liam to come home and find out I’d destroyed the world. So it was time to hire some new legal counsel. I checked on my enchanters, found them painting their toenails instead of cursing parking violators, then checked on Beth. She sported several new bite marks to her face and had a look that said if I brought it up, she’d offer me some unconventional piercings on the spot. So I left the Agency and headed out to meet my new lawyer.

When I walked through the door of Ari’s apartment, he slithered out, his skeletal form materializing from the black vapor. I opened my purse and took out a present I’d picked up on the way over. A phone with text-to-speech capabilities, which meant I wouldn’t have to read his responses. “Larry, I’d like to make a business proposition.”

He picked up the phone with one skeletal claw and clipped it to his sternum. “It’s a bit late for that. If you asked before you signed the contract, I could have helped.”

The only good thing about making a deal with demons was that I had learned to ask about conditions first. “How do I pay you? Check? Card?”

His jaw creaked open in what I hoped was a smile. “Souls. I haven’t eaten since Ari moved in.”

He wasn’t supposed to be eating the garbage or postmen before that, but I didn’t feel like arguing the point. “I’ll find you someone. Last night I took the express elevator down, and I’m in danger of defaulting on the contract if I don’t get started. I’m supposed to be unleashing some harbingers to start. Any idea how?”

The look of contempt he summoned from an empty skull left me envious. “What do they teach in public schools these days?” He drifted over to the coffee table, where my contract sat. “You have to summon the harbingers, provide them with their mounts, and let them go to town on the city. They set the stage for the demons. Think of it like a housewarming, where you set the house on fire.”

“These harbingers; Malodin said they’d come when I called.”

He spun so quickly the rags on his skeleton flew outward. “Don’t do it here.”

“I’ll wait until I’m back at the office. What exactly are they going to do?”

Larry drifted to a bookcase and levitated out a tome. “I slept through a lot of my History of Fallen Civilizations class, but basically they’ll ride around the city twice, then begin the carnage.”

“So how do I get out of this?”

Larry moved his hand, and the contract swelled to its full size, becoming several feet across. “If there were an escape clause, I’d have found it by now. They get revised every time someone finds a way to avert the apocalypse. This one looks pretty good.”

“There’s no way out?” I sat on Ari’s couch, sinking into the worn fabric.

“Not if you want to delay the end of the world. You have to do what you are obligated to do. As your counsel, I can’t advise you to break the terms of the contract. But don’t do anything voluntarily.” Dust flew from the corners of the room, and the stench of blood and decay flooded my nose as he began to chant.

A cloud of darkness formed before him, then slowly cleared, leaving a piece of paper. Larry drifted over to me. “Take this.” I looked at it. It looked like a normal contract—that is, absolute garbage, but at least it was in English. “Do nothing you don’t have to.”

“I found Ari’s boyfriend.”

Larry’s eyes lit up with a green glow I hoped meant excitement. “Send him over. I won’t eat him until
after
he wakes her.”

“He didn’t agree to wake her yet. And I think she’d object to you devouring him.”

His shoulder blades clattered as he dropped them in disappointment. “What kind of person wouldn’t want to help Ari?”

I tucked the contract into my purse and rose. “He’s a prince.”

“Figures. If he says no, can I still eat him?”

“If he won’t help Ari, I’ll tie him up and douse him with barbecue sauce, then put him in a chest freezer. Speaking of which, I need to change the baking soda in Ari’s, umm, chamber.”

Larry waved his hand. “I’ll get it later. I’ve got nothing but time.”

So I left Ari in the care of a spirit of evil, and headed back to the office to call down destruction.

Twenty-One

I THINK IF I’d hit one more traffic light on my way back to the Agency, someone would have died. I intended to check on Beth. Instead, I interrupted something that would have constituted a human resources violation even by my limited standards. In the kitchen, Mikey held my enchanter pinned to the wall. The enchanter’s feet hung a good six inches off the ground, while Mikey’s muscles bulged and the hair on his arms seemed thick and long. He leaned over into the enchanter’s face and growled. “Go ahead and say it.”

“Not—” the enchanter choked. “Not by the hair on my chinny chin chin.”

“Mikey?” I didn’t bother going for my gun. If anything, I wanted to make sure I could make an impression on the intern without making a bullet hole.

He looked back like a little boy sent to the principal’s office. “He said, I mean, he called me—”

“A big bad wolf?” I kept my tone calm, then motioned to my witless spell slinger. “If you don’t mind?”

Mikey dropped him into a heap on the ground and gave a warning growl.

“Come on.” Holding open the kitchen door, I waved him back toward my office. I sat at my desk while Mikey completely dwarfed his chair. “You have to learn to let things go. This is my business. I don’t terribly like the Enchanters either; I mean, they’re nearly incompetent, they smell—”

“Not as bad as you. You reek of brimstone.” Mikey caught himself too late and went back to staring at the floor.

“This isn’t about me; it’s about you getting along with my other employees. I’ve said worse than them.”

Mikey looked up at me. “Yeah, but Fairy Godfather said not to kill you. It’s always the same thing. The big bad wolf. What’s wrong with being the big bad wolf? When I was a pup, Dad always said if I ate my meat and got big and strong, I could be like the big bad wolf.”

“The big bad wolf got cooked by the pigs. Down a chimney, not Santa, things didn’t go well. Though honestly, from what I’ve seen, if Santa comes down your chimney, you’re screwed.”

Mikey put his elbows on my desk. His eyes looked off at the ceiling, his mouth turned slightly up. “Maybe in your version. The way I hear it, the pigs never saw him coming. He made bacon for his entire family, two hundred pounds of sausage, six whole hams, and a football for every one of his pups. Then, he rented out the third pig’s house and lived off the occasional bad renter.” Mikey’s eyes gleamed with wild pleasure. “Maybe one day, I can be a landlord too.”

I made a mental note to look up my building’s ownership and see what exactly my lease allowed them to do. “I need you, Mikey. I’m holding the Agency together until I can find a way to bring back Grimm. I’m sorry that folks don’t understand. Wolves aren’t exactly popular.”

Mikey focused on me for a moment. “How come you smell like demons?”

I sighed. “When I went back to close off a poodle leak, I had a close encounter with one. Now it thinks I’ve agreed to do something I haven’t.”

Mikey’s eyebrows arched and his eyes widened. “You need anything killed, you come to me first, okay?”

“You got it. If it makes any difference, I’ll make our enchanters take sensitivity training. Got any good books on wolf history?”

He practically bounded from the chair. “You bet. Next time I’m back at the village, I’ll bring you something worth reading.” Then he loped out of the office, closing my door behind him.

In the empty room, I took out my contract and skimmed it. Harbingers. “The party will summon harbingers and provide them mounts.” What had Malodin said? Call, and they would come?

I cleared my throat. “Harbingers of the apocalypse, I call you.”

Nothing happened. I slumped back in my chair, wondering what I’d done wrong.

Then the buzzer on my desk went off. I clicked the intercom.

“Visitor,” said Rosa.

Before I could get up, my door opened, and in walked a stunning black man. He stood easily six feet, with wide shoulders and long, thin legs. His broad smile showed shining white teeth. “Handmaiden, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you. I’ve been waiting for your call.”

I shook his hand, surprised to find a strong, warm grip that matched the smile.

“I’m War, Harbinger of the Apocalypse.”

“You’re not exactly how I pictured you.” In truth, I’d imagined a biker with racist tattoos and a baseball bat.