Free Agent (28 page)

I gave her the look.

She stopped for a moment, then opened her mouth. “Oh. You want burn cream?”

“No. Remind me to ask Grimm for help when we get back to the Agency. Now, come on, we've got work to do. I'm sorry about the driving test. I'm sorry about the magic test, and I'm sorry about the civics exam. I've got a lobby full of potential clients and I'm missing my right-hand woman.”

Ari stared at me for a moment. “We don't get the results of the civics test until tonight.”

“Well, in that case I have a feeling you'll be doing the makeup exam. Now go get dressed for business and we'll try doing something you're good at.” She left me with the lich, and as she walked out the mood in the room changed.

I knew Grimm negotiated safety for folks who stayed out of the basement. As the lights flickered and black smoke began to ooze out from the lich like tendrils, I kept my cool. “Larry, you hear about her driver's test?”

The tendrils paused for a moment and stopped snaking toward me. Larry nodded.

“When it comes to driver's tests, that girl is cursed.”

The lich shook its head, managing to keep it attached. Not bad for someone who'd been dead a few years.

“Sorry,” I said. “I don't mean actually cursed. She just has really bad luck.”

Again the lich shook his head. Then he drifted over toward one of the towering bookcases and began to point one by one to black-bound tomes, as if counting. It stretched out a skeletal hand toward one and beckoned to me with the other.

If it were anyone other than Grimm who laid out the contract, I'd have worried. We rented a truck to move the paper version of the contract after Grimm drew it up. I took the book out and looked at it, trying to make sense of the triangle-based hieroglyphics.

“I don't read anything but English.” I went to put the book back, but it held out a hand, stopping me. One claw touched the book and a vaporlike mist seeped out. Through the mist, the letters crawled like maggots, rearranging themselves into words I could read. Also, I wasn't hungry anymore.
Celestial Law, Volume Three Hundred
, read the title.

I opened the book, and a wind began to whip through the room, blowing Ari's mail into the air and flipping the pages until at last it died down. Again the lich did the maggot words thing. I read the chapter title. “The Exchange Principle.”

I struggled through the first paragraph, then followed a bone finger to a single sentence. “For everything given, something must be taken. For every blessing, a curse.”

At the words
blessing
and
curse
I shivered for reasons of my own. Blessings, curses, no real difference. I've had a curse do great things for me and a blessing do awful things. I had one of each. “This isn't about me. I was talking about Ari.”

It shook his head again and pointed up the stairs. Then my mind got to thinking. Princesses were ridiculously lucky. They had innate magic that made things work out for them. Vicious creatures like hellhounds loved them, evil creatures like wraiths tolerated them, and hungry creatures like wolves would rather eat gym-sock soup than a single bite of princess. But maybe, I thought, all this came at a cost. If the only cost was not being able to drive, that was quite a bargain.

“Larry, are you trying to devour Marissa again?” Ari stood on the stairs dressed in a standard black business suit with white shirt. She looked almost professional, but still cute.

The lich shook his skull and held up his hands.

“He was explaining something to me. On his best behavior, I promise.” I exchanged a glance with the lich and returned the book to its place. Then I took Ari and got the hell out of the haunted house she called home.

J. C. Nelson
is a software developer and ex-beekeeper residing in the Pacific Northwest with family and a few chickens. Visit the author online at authorjcnelson.com.