“Can we gag her?” demanded Andy.
“Absolutely,” said Sloane.
“Can someone get me some mouthwash?” I pushed myself upright, not shrugging Jeff’s hand away but not reaching for it either. My eyes were still closed. I didn’t want to open them. I understood explosives well enough to know what must have happened to my borrowed army of woodland creatures when they charged into Birdie’s house, and I didn’t want to see their bodies just yet. “Everything tastes like apples, and I’m not too happy about that.”
Sloane laughed. “She’s still Henry.”
“Was that in question?” I asked, finally cracking one eye open.
Jeff was right there next to me, not holding me up, but hovering in a way that made it clear he would do so if I needed him to. At that moment, I wouldn’t have minded being held. Andy was a short distance away. His jacket was gone, and red stains on his shirt and trousers marked the places where the blast had flung broken squirrels and shattered pigeons against him. Sloane loomed suddenly into view, dropping into a crouch as she peered quizzically into my eyes. Unlike Jeff, who was relatively untouched, and Andy, with his few small splotches of red, Sloane was
covered
in blood. Even the red streaks in her hair had taken on a deeper color, almost blending with the black.
I blinked. She grinned.
“Don’t worry—most of it’s Demi’s,” she said. “You still feeling bossy and cantankerous in there, Snow-bitch, or are you thinking about digging little graves for all your little animal friends?”
“Don’t make me report you to Human Resources,” I snapped. “Now somebody help me up before something else explodes.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, the boss is back,” said Andy, a wide smile splitting his face. “You scared the crap out of us, Henry.”
“We’re not out of the woods yet, people,” I said, and grimaced, my eyes cheating toward the trees growing on all sides. “No pun intended. Sloane, were you being serious when you said that most of that was Demi’s blood? Because I’m not quite ready to condone beating her to death.”
“She got a nosebleed,” said Sloane, reaching forward and taking my hand in hers. Her fingers left red stains on my skin. “Sure, I had to punch her four or five times to make that happen, but nosebleeds are a normal part of being a traitorous bitch who goes over to the dark side at the first sign of trouble.”
I thought of the forest while Sloane pulled me to my feet. “She may not have had a choice, if the narrative shook her hard enough when she was already standing on unsteady ground,” I said. My knees wobbled as I tried to stand on my own, and Jeff was there, putting his arm around my shoulders without waiting for permission. I leaned gratefully into him. I wasn’t sure whether this was a good idea, but this whole night had been built on a foundation of potentially bad decisions, and at least I knew that Jeff would never blossom into a Prince Charming. That was one roller coaster I could still avoid.
Andy frowned. “You all right there?”
“Not even a little bit, but thanks.” I wiped the mud from my cheek. For the first time in my life, I was genuinely glad to be a second-generation story. First-generation Snow Whites usually had
some
of the signature coloring, but it intensified after they became active. I couldn’t have coped with suddenly losing my melanin after everything else that had happened since the sun went down. “What’s Demi’s condition? Apart from the nosebleed.”
“See for yourself.” Sloane pointed at something behind me. I turned.
Demi was sitting on the street with her back propped against the side of the van. Her arms and legs had been taped together with black electrical tape, and there was a ball of wadded-up fabric in her mouth, held in place with another strip of tape. Blood covered the lower half of her face, and one of her eyes was starting to swell nicely from what I judged to be a rather solid punch. She glared daggers at me as I looked at her.
“Please tell me that’s not a sock,” I said.
“It should have been a sock; she deserves a sock,” said Andy. “But no. It’s my tie.”
“Good. That’s a little more sanitary. Where’s her flute?”
“We saved all the pieces,” said Jeff.
Under the circumstances, I couldn’t argue with their decision to take Demi’s weapon away. In fact … “We need to secure her feet better,” I said. “She’s a Piper. If she can hammer out a rhythm, she can use it against us.”
Demi’s eyes widened in sudden realization.
“I didn’t think of that,” said Jeff.
“Apparently, neither did she,” said Sloane. “Good job, Henry.”
“Stuff it,” I suggested mildly.
“Play nicely, please,” said Andy, as he moved to wrap more tape around Demi’s feet. She glared at him. He ignored it. “What next, boss?”
I needed a shower, and something to take the taste of apples out of my mouth. Sometimes I hate being in charge. “We head back to base,” I said. “The deputy director needs to know what happened out here, and we can dispatch someone to get us all clean clothes.” There are advantages to being located in an old biological research facility. An on-site shower room is one of them.
“I keep a change of clothes in my desk,” said Sloane. We all turned to blink at her. She shrugged. “What, you think I have all those packages shipped to the office for my health? It’s always ‘Sloane, go into the sewer after the gremlin,’ or ‘Sloane, wade into the abattoir to save the baby.’ I throw out six pairs of tights a month.”
“I am not having this conversation right now,” grumbled Andy. “It’s too weird, even for me.”
“None of us are having any more conversations right now,” I said. “Jeff, get some plastic sheeting over the seats in the van. Andy, you and Sloane get Demi into the back. We’re going home.”
It was time to face the music, in more ways than one.
Of the five of us, only Jeff and I were completely unwounded: Andy had some shrapnel in his left shoulder—bits of wood and bone flung outward by the explosion—and Sloane had skinned her knuckles on Demi’s teeth. Jeff had been shielded from the blast by Andy, and I had been in the front, sending the animals back inside to die. All I really needed to be presentable was a wet nap from the glove compartment.
Demi, of course, had had the crap beaten out of her.
The wet nap’s plastic packaging smelled faintly of the barbecue joint that it had originally come from, some forgotten fast-food-run ago. I resisted the urge to lick it as I wiped the mud from my cheek and chin. Anything to get the taste of apple out of my mouth. Jeff, who was driving, kept stealing glances in my direction, almost like he couldn’t believe that I was really there. I wasn’t sure that I believed it myself.
When we pulled up in front of Bureau headquarters I dropped the wet-nap on the van floor—it already needed a thorough cleanup after the events of the night; one more piece of garbage wasn’t going to make a difference—and said, “Does everybody know where they’re going?”
“Holding cells and then the infirmary,” said Andy.
“Infirmary and then the holding cells,” said Sloane.
“Archives,” said Jeff.
“Good. I will be updating our beloved deputy director. If anything explodes or catches fire, call me. And for the love of Grimm, somebody order a goddamn pizza or something. If I don’t get this taste out of my mouth, I’m going to scream.”
I hopped out and slammed the van door behind me, stalking toward the darkened building. It was strangely satisfying, like a denial of the placid little fairy tale princess that the narrative wanted me to be. It wanted a Snow White? I’d give it a Snow White, and make it sorry.
My key card still worked when I swiped it across the reader. I hadn’t realized I was worried about that until the light turned green and the door clicked open. Birdie had been in Dispatch for years, so there was no telling how deep her control of our systems might go. If she knew that I’d gone active, she could have called security and reported me as a threat before her own clearance was revoked by our report.
The thought that I might be walking into a trap was still trying to form when I opened the door and found Piotr waiting for me. His whipcord-thin frame was draped in a black suit that was the virtual twin of my own, but on him it seemed funereal, like he was perpetually on the way to someone’s graveside. The two largest members of his field team flanked him, one a former linebacker, the other a half-activated three-one-three, with the characteristic strength and stature of the giant’s daughter she had been born to represent.
I looked at the three of them, one by one, before settling on Piotr. “You’re being manipulated,” I said.
“Your breath smells like apples,” he replied. “Give me your hands, Agent Marchen.”
“This is a mistake,” I said, and presented my hands, wrists together, for him to cuff.
“I hope you’re right,” he said. He fastened the handcuffs loosely enough that they didn’t cut off my circulation. I was grateful for that.
My team would be catching up with me any second. I didn’t want them to see this. “All right,” I said. “Let’s go.”
Piotr and his team closed in around me, and together the four of us walked off down the white-walled hall, toward the room that would decide my future.
Demi was probably in a room a lot like this one by now: small, with gunmetal-gray walls broken only by the large rectangular block of a mirror, as if anyone in the world still believed that they were looking only at their own reflections and not at the ghosts of the people hidden behind the glass. My hands were cuffed to the table in front of me; they’d taken my badge, jacket, and gun, leaving me feeling naked and defenseless. Worst of all, they hadn’t given me any mouthwash, and the taste of apples was still thick in my mouth.
“You know, while you hold me here, Birdie is getting farther and farther away,” I said to the mirror. “I’ve broken no laws, and my team supports my story. So while I understand that psychological torture is a big part of what we do in these rooms, I’d really appreciate it if you’d get on with things before we completely lose control of the situation.”
“I’d say you lost control of the situation when you picked up that apple, Agent Marchen,” said Deputy Director Brewer as he entered through the door to my left. He had a file in his hands, with my name written on the tab. “What the hell made you do that, Henry?”
“There was a bomb, sir. Escaping required me to think outside the box.”
He fixed me with a stern eye, walking across the room and sitting down on the other side of the table before he said, “The narrative has been pushing you to think outside that particular box since infancy, Agent Marchen. Why should I see this as a selfless choice, and not as the final excuse you needed to do what you had always wanted to do?”
“You know, Deputy Director, I’ve always sort of wished you were on the spectrum. It would make this easier for you to understand, which would make things easier on all of us.” I leaned as far back in my chair as the handcuffs would allow, looking at him. “I never wanted this.
Nobody
wants their narrative, not if they’re aware of what it means. We had no other way out of that house.”
“You keep saying that,” he said, opening my file. “Care to explain yourself?”
“That depends. Are you going to listen, or are you just letting me talk myself dry before you have me locked up as a dangerous memetic incursion?”
He hesitated, and for the first time since he had entered the room, I felt like he was honestly looking at
me
, and not the story that I represented. “I don’t know,” he said.
“That’s something, I guess,” I said, and began my explanation.
It took a while to tell him everything that had happened at Birdie’s house, from our arrival—when we thought we were on a rescue mission, not walking into a trap—to the moment that I bit into the apple and everything changed. He paled slightly when I told him what I’d done to the animals, less I think because that sort of behavior was unusual, and more because people tended to forget that the seven-oh-nines were just as dangerous as any other tale type. Everyone thinks of them in terms of poisoned apples and glass coffins, and forgets that they represent girls who walked into dark forests and remade them into their own reflections.
Worse, they forget that we’re still remaking those reflections. The whole “woodland creatures” thing is a relatively recent addition to the tale, borrowed from Disney and internalized by so many children that it has actually modified the narrative itself. Even as the narrative drives us, so do we drive it.
I wish I could find that thought more comforting.
I didn’t tell him about the whiteout wood filled with girls who could have been me in another lifetime; I just told him that the strain of activating my story had knocked me unconscious, and that when I’d woken up, Demi had already been taken into custody, and we had agreed to return to the Bureau. I stopped talking then, waiting for his response.
Minutes slithered by like snakes moving through tall grass while Deputy Director Brewer and I stared at each other. It was like he was daring me to blink first.
Do it,
urged the small voice of Snow.
Let him think he’s won. Kings like to think they’ve won.
But he wasn’t a king, and this wasn’t a fairy tale, and I was not a princess in hiding. I was Henrietta Marchen, field agent, and fuck the narrative if it wanted me to be anything else. I kept my eyes on his, daring him to look away.
In the end, he did. “This is your formal report?” he asked, looking down at the file. He hadn’t been taking notes. He didn’t need to; we both knew that we were being recorded.
“Yes, sir.” The only parts I had omitted were the parts that no one could give to him but me. My secrets, such as they were, would be safe until I chose to share them.
“This is what your team will tell me as well?”
“Yes, sir. Although they were awake when Demi was captured, so they may have additional details.”
“I never expected this from you.”
“Are you relieving me of duty?” It seemed like a silly question, given the situation, but it encompassed every other question I could possibly have asked. Was I under arrest? Was I relieved of duty? Was I going to disappear into that private warren of safe houses and sealed rooms where we kept the narratives that couldn’t be averted but couldn’t be trusted among the general population either? Sloane had always been afraid of vanishing into that maze. Until this moment, until this night, I had never really considered that as something that could happen to me.