Free Wish Bound (A Grimm Agency Novel Book 3) by J. C. Nelson

called.
    He snapped into view immediately, his power flooding out through the bracelet once more. “Trouble, my dear?”
    “It’s the post office. Same as usual. I got the package.” I nodded to it, a tight leather bundle bound in black thread. “What’s in here?” I knew better than to open Grimm’s packages. We had an intern once who opened a package because he got curious about the noises inside of it. Every time I went in that storage room, I spotted another bit of intern stuck to the walls.
    Grimm shook his head. “You can open the box when you’ve returned to the Agency. Not before.”
    “Never been a big fan of surprises. Just tell me?”
    “I’ve kept the contents safe for four hundred years, stored at the postal service, but the contents are now yours. It is your uniform, you might say. An outfit most appropriate for the handmaiden.” With those words, he dashed whatever hope I’d held that what happened earlier was all the result of a bad head injury.

Seven
    I SAW ARI the moment I opened the Agency door, and gave my best tryout for the Jets, nearly tackling her. I might not have knocked her down, but it would still get me on the team. Alternating between squeezing her until she coughed and wanting to wring her neck, I buried her in a hug. “What were you thinking? You could have been killed.” I pushed her back and looked her in the face.
    Ari didn’t speak. She just looked at me with her witch eyes and trembled. Her voice, when it came, whispered like plastic bags in the autumn wind. “I was supposed to defeat her. I listened to the Fae Mother. She said I would be the last to challenge the Black Queen. She said I could save you.”
    I wanted to shake Ari until those yellow eyes rolled back in her head. As Grimm pointed out, the Fae speech was almost as bad as Grimm’s native tongue. Let ten people listen to the same words, and they’d give you eleven different versions of the same thing.
    “Come on. This is no place to talk.” I grabbed Ari by the arm, wanting to leave the crowded lobby for a place where every ear wasn’t latched on to our conversation. We almost made it, too, before the building’s emergency alarm went off, flashing red lights and a fire alarm siren that threatened to split my skull. For the second time in one day, we’d have to evacuate the building. Three more times, and we might match the record.
    “Everyone out,” said Rosa, pointing to the door.
    I left Ari to guard the door while I ushered whining people out into the hall and pointed to the stairs. “Stay away from the elevators.” When the last of them left, I pulled the stairwell door closed and sprinted back to the Agency.
    Grimm waited in the lobby mirror. “Marissa, there’s no reason for the alarms to be going off. No cupcakes, no birthday candles of any sort.” The way Grimm’s jaw set and his eyebrows furrowed said the Fairy Godfather did not appreciate surprises. “Rosa, bring up the entrance cameras. Something tripped my short-term danger indicators.”
    Rosa flipped a few switches, and the monitor that usually played Spanish soap operas all day switched to a split screen, showing every entrance to our building along with a Spanish soap opera.
    “There.” I pointed to the corner. Against the throng of people surging out of the building, four figures threaded their way inward. Their leather cloaks, fur trimmings, and hoods gave away exactly what group had made a fatal decision to attack us. “Huntsmen.”
    Kingdom’s bounty hunters, usually tasked with killing anything that wasn’t human and dared attract attention. Their repeating crossbows could pin a man to the concrete or, with a different arrow, punch his heart out through the back of his ribs.
    “Picking a fight with Grimm on his turf is suicide.” Ari began to crackle as lightning jumped from hand to hand. Anytime Ari was upset or angry, you could power a small city with the sparks she gave off.
    A wave of fear washed down my scalp