Read Online Free Agent by J. C. Nelson - Free Book Online

together. It is the way of things.”
    Anger rushed through me, shielding me for a moment from the grief. I straightened up and glared at him. “I’m not the first girl sold for Glitter. Most of them wind up as handmaidens to a princess, or shopkeepers, or newspaper interns. Why did you make me an agent?”
    â€œBecause, my dear, anything else would have been a waste. You are talented beyond most I have met, and bright, and strong. You would not have been happy in those other lives.”
    My shield of anger cracked and my hands shook. “I’m not happy here either. Don’t I deserve happiness?” I hoped he couldn’t hear me almost sobbing over the sounds of the water.
    He grayed out a little and came back into focus. “You do, my dear, you do.”
    My chest hurt with each breath. I stuck my hand into the scalding water, and held it there until the pain from it matched what I felt inside. “I don’t want Ari to have him. I want him for me.”
    He didn’t answer.
    â€œBut I’m not a princess,” I said, knowing the cold truth of it.
    â€œI will have Evangeline handle the rest, Marissa. You do deserve to be happy, and you aren’t a princess, but that’s never made you less important in my eyes.”
    â€œTell Evangeline I’m not coming to meet her. And remember I keep my end of the bargain, Grimm. Always.”
    He left me there in the bathroom, at last and always alone.
    My purse beeped, and I dumped it out to find the cell phone and a stack of forty-nine brand-new business cards with its number. They came in lots of fifty. I never needed more than one. I missed four calls since dinner, all from Liam.
    I walked out onto the balcony and looked at the city street below. Cars zipped past, leaving trails of light in the darkness. In my hand the cell phone chirped again. Three voice mail messages. Tradition said I should throw the phone off the balcony and let gravity do the heavy lifting, but my heart and my hands said different. I couldn’t call, ever. But I could keep the phone and listen to his voice, and have a tiny part of him. Ari and Grimm and the rest of the world would never know. So I went back inside and slipped the phone into my purse. Bruises on my arm where the goblin had grabbed sent tremors of pain through me every time I moved, but didn’t compare to the bruises on my heart I’d put there myself. The hours rolled away while I lay on the bed, aching my way through to dawn.

Seven

    IT WAS TIME to go to work, but I couldn’t risk meeting Ari, so I went in through the service entrance. Evangeline waited in the back room, going over papers, and she came over and gave me a hug. “Heard about last night. You’ll get used to it eventually.”
    â€œI messed up. I got too close.”
    She poured me a cup of coffee. “Do this long enough and it won’t be the last time you screw up.” I didn’t intend to be doing it that long. Then again, neither had she.
    Rosa came in. She’d been the receptionist longer than I’d worked there. I figured she came with the building. “Evie, your client is out front.”
    Evangeline left to get ready for a day’s work. Probably Ari. Probably about Liam. I tapped on the mirror. “Grimm, what do you got for me? Troll? Maybe a few elves in a shoe factory?”
    He answered from the mirror down the back hall. “My dear, I was thinking that perhaps you might want to do inventory on the storage room. The lost-and-found pile has started moving on its own, and something ate everything in the office fridge last night, containers and all.”
    I sat up, cold shivers running down my back. “Including the cheese wheel?”
    â€œMarissa, don’t be ridiculous.”
    It figured. There was a running debate—one might say legend—among Grimm’s hourly workers over how the cheese wheel actually came to be in the fridge in the first