Page 4 of Looking Grimm (Marionette #4)

The next twenty-four hours were spent sending my list of demands to Briggs, running to the store to buy clothes of my own, and exchanging text messages with Ripley to cobble together some semblance of a plan.

We agreed on one thing: Grimm and the Hex may have moved their base of operations and may have found another watering hole since being banned from the Bitters’ End, but there was no chance of Grimm giving up his dedicated honeypot. Ripley may not have been willing to work with the cops, but he sure was working like one, sitting beside me in the Porsche a block down from the Blooming Orchid, barely obscured by the cover of night.

I felt better than I had in weeks. I was buzzed enough to take the edge off, thanks to the brown paper-wrapped bottle I’d brought with me, and I looked more like myself in jeans and a layered hoodie and jacket than I ever did in Nash’s sweats.

It was unclear what we were watching or waiting for. I didn’t trust myself to recognize any of the rabble Grimm had added to the gang’s ranks over the past few months. Ripley claimed even more had joined in the time I’d been preoccupied with the Capitol, which made me wonder what was being said to make thug life sound more appealing than I knew it to be.

After an hour of sitting and staring at the Blooming Orchid’s entrance, I snorted a hot breath. “This is boring as fuck.”

“You wanted reconnaissance.” Ripley raised one bony shoulder. “This is reconnaissance.”

Easy for him to say. He’d barely pulled his head out of his phone long enough to know where we were, much less keep an eye on the progress of things. Even now he wore his neon green earbuds, and his head bounced absently along to the music video playing on his cell’s screen.

Grumbling, I went for my cigarettes and earned a sour glare from Ripley. But, without a no smoking sign to back him up, he had no grounds for protest.

“I want to make progress ,” I said. “For as much good as this is doing, I could’ve just stayed at the bar.”

“But look.” Ripley tapped a finger against the whiskey bottle lying in the center console. “You brought the bar with you. It’s like being at home.”

The Bitters’ End wasn’t quite home. Neither was the Lazy Daze motel, or the houseboat, as much as I’d wanted it to be. It seemed I’d spent the bulk of my life displaced. Rarely where I wanted to be and surrounded by people I didn’t want to be with. Nash would have argued that, saying I was always welcome at his place but, even in his company, I often felt adrift .

Taking a drag off the cigarette, I levered the car door open and stepped out. “Gotta take a piss,” I said in response to the question Ripley hadn’t asked. He was consumed with the K-pop dancers in glitter and pastels prancing across his phone.

His inattention grated on me, and I ducked my head back into the car to add, “And then I’m gonna kill some people.”

He flapped his fingers in a dismissive wave. “Have fun.”

Scowling, I added magic to my push on the door, slamming it so hard the little red coupe rocked.

Turning toward the street stretching before and behind me, I studied windowed shop fronts and flickering streetlamps. The area had recovered nicely from the plague closures, a rash of looting, and Avery’s earthquake prank. It looked almost as idyllic as it had in my youth, full of nostalgia with a quaintly small-town vibe.

I’d lied about my reason for leaving, of course. Businesses downtown didn’t take kindly to passersby ducking in to use the facilities and then leaving. Restrooms were for paying customers only. And I wasn’t nearly drunk enough to take a leak in the alley like a bum, so I started walking instead.

As far as I knew, I was still welcome at the Blooming Orchid. The last time I’d been by with Holland, following a lead on the missing persons case, Isha had opted not to incriminate me. Or herself, since she was the one who delivered Lover Boy to me in the first place.

My cigarette flared where I held it between my pursed lips as I advanced toward the tattoo parlor. I didn’t expect the whore madam to incriminate Grimm, either, or betray his whereabouts to me. But I could make her talk about something—anything—and see what came of it.

I crossed the street toward my destination, not bothering to wait for the intersection. Once my feet hit the sidewalk in front of the Blooming Orchid, I hesitated. I’d come at night, during business hours, and I could see through the front glass that the tattoo parlor was crowded with customers. Isha herself was a vision as always, sitting bent over a man in a chair with her tattoo gun poised above his left hand. I leaned against the brick wall at the edge of the window and watched while she finished her work, then cleaned and bandaged the fresh ink.

The man stood and offered thanks—I assumed, as I was unable to hear or see much but his lips moving in profile—before he turned to go. His left side faced me as he walked with his hand hanging near his waist. I cast a passing glance at his tattoo, thinking the placement interesting, though hardly significant until he drew close enough for the design to become clear.

It was a grayscale skull with thorny vines winding around and through the gaping eye sockets. He was practically at the door when I realized. This man—this stranger—now wore a Hex mark.

My stomach lurched so abruptly that I thought I might retch all over the pavement. There was only one Hex mark up for grabs since Jax had died before being able to claim it. That meant Grimm had found an alternate to fill Donovan’s spot. As the man reached the door inside, I glowered at him through a film of stinging tears.

I was too raw these days, leaking anger and sadness like a goddamned faucet.

Plucking the cigarette from my mouth, I flung it to the ground and wiped my sleeve across my face. The door swung open outward, and I expected the stranger to come my way but was relieved when he turned the opposite direction.

Relieved, yes, but no less enraged. Why was this so casual? If a new member was being inducted, why weren’t Grimm and the others here to bear witness? Where was the pomp and circumstance? I flexed the muscles in my arms as I took off after the retreating stranger. They forced my brother to trade his innocence for his place among them. What did this man give? Not nearly enough.

I tailed him at a distance, cutting my own path through the narrow shadows that lined the storefronts. A few pedestrians passed, engaged in small talk that came and went as background noise. Something predatory grew inside of me, malevolent thoughts that had been pushed out of my mind by the hope of redemption. I’d been a killer for a long time. Far longer than I’d been Capitol Fitch, or whoever I was trying to be now. Somehow, things were simpler when I was a puppet under Grimm’s control. Problems were easily solved.

I could solve this problem, too. By eliminating it.

We traveled about a block before he turned off toward a parked car. I could have followed him in there, piled into the passenger seat, and forced him to drive us somewhere secluded. Downtown was not an ideal place to drop a body, but I had plans for this one.

Power sparked between my fingers, then fizzled out. I was a functional drunk, and imbibing less than usual tonight, but liquor had a way of going straight to the part of my brain that controlled my magic and causing untimely misfires. Looked like I would have to settle for manual operation .

The man had opened the door of his beater sedan and swung a leg inside by the time I caught up to him. I came around the back end of the car and was convinced he didn’t see me before I grabbed the hood of his sweatshirt and yanked him out.

He made a choked sound as I flung him backward onto the ground. His head hit the pavement with an audible knock.

The man blinked and gasped as he stared up from under me, his eyes dark and wide in the moonlight.

I got a better look at my incidental victim. He was older than me—mid-thirties maybe?—and prematurely balding. His dark hair arched back from his brow in a deep widow’s peak. I assumed he was a witch, but the type was not immediately obvious, and he seemed in no hurry to show me.

“Who are you?” I demanded, planting my boot in the center of the downed man’s chest.

He raised both hands in pitiful defense. A fitting replacement for my brother, all right. Didn’t have an ounce of fight in him.

“Charles,” he replied in a rush of the air I was currently grinding out of him. “Charlie. Charlie Porter.”

One name would have been more than enough, but that wasn’t what I wanted to know. Why him? What made him worthy? Chosen? And where was everyone else? It would have been too convenient to find them all here, but didn’t they care about celebrating their newest member?

“What’s this?” I flicked a finger at his tattooed hand, pinning it, skull side up, to the asphalt beside him.

I smirked. Guess I had a little juice in me, after all.

Charlie’s head rolled toward his splayed, plastic-wrapped hand, then back up at me. “You know, man,” he sputtered. “You’ve got one, too.”

My pride rankled at the comparison. “Big difference,” I said. “I earned mine.” Leaning farther over him leveraged more weight on his chest and made him groan. “What’d you do?”

“Nobody’s doing anything yet. We’re holding formation. Biding time.”

If that didn’t sound like Grimm’s militarized bullshit…

“Biding time for what?” I snapped.

“The war.”

I barked a laugh. “Not gonna be much of a war with his four fucking people.” I didn’t include the dozen or so peons clinging on since the recruitment rally debacle. No sense in me counting them because I was certain Grimm didn’t.

“Four?” Charlie echoed. “I think it’s more like forty.”

I whistled, and an inkling of genuine concern worked its way into my mind. If that was true, Grimm’s forces now outnumbered the investigators. I could have made a few jabs about quantity versus quality, but I didn’t have much nice to say about the Capitol these days.

“Well, how’d you do it?” I asked though I wasn’t certain I wanted to know. “How’d you earn the Hex mark out of forty-some-odd people?”

Charlie’s receding hairline scrunched. “What do you mean? We all have them now.”

Anger flared like a striking match, lighting me up on the inside and making me feel like I could breathe fire. It was an insult. A slap in the face. The incorporation of what had once been elite. People used to fight for the honor that was now being given out like hand stamps at the county fair. Donovan died for it.

Of all the vitriol I wanted to spew, the only thing I managed to get out was a muttered, “You don’t say.”

“Yeah. You just go to that tattoo parlor and ask, and the nice lady hooks you up.” Charlie wiggled under the sole of my shoe. “But you know this stuff, right? You’re top brass. Marionette?”

I worked my jaw and glared down the street to make sure no one was closing in on what I wanted to keep a private conversation.

“I’ve been out of the loop for a bit,” I said, “but I think it’s time I got back in.”

Charlie gave another struggling squirm. “Well, it’s a…” His voice sounded strained, wrung out of air as I shifted more of my weight onto him. “It’s an honor. You’re the first of the higher-ups I’ve met, and I gotta say I’ve always been a fan.” His ensuing smile was weak but genuine.

Safe to assume then that they weren’t talking about me. At least not in the circles Charlie traveled in. It was hard not to see it as another slight, or maybe Grimm was controlling the narrative, pretending his prodigal son hadn’t ventured so far from home.

Charlie’s amiable expression faltered as he asked, “Would you mind letting me up now?”

So, he hadn’t taken Donovan’s spot. Not officially. But the tattoo staring up at the sky bugged me all the same.

“Sorry, Charlie,” I replied. “That’s not in the cards.”

It must have confused him when I lifted my foot from his chest, but I didn’t leave him wondering long. Pivoting, I moved my raised boot over his face, then braced to drive it down .

Charlie yelped, and Ripley’s voice rose over the sound of the other man’s sharp cry.

“I thought you were joking!” he exclaimed from where he stood on the sidewalk, quickly closing in. “Taking a piss. You’re taking the piss, all right.” His volume dropped to a grumble as he gestured to Charlie. “Let him go.”

I paused, poised to deliver the blow. “He’s seen me now. I have to kill him.”

Ripley gave a shove that knocked me off balance. I staggered aside, leaving Charlie flat on his back and whimpering.

Ripley’s shaggy hair had fallen in his face, and he blew out a breath to clear his line of sight to me. I hardly needed the added view of his scorn. “Everyone’s seen you, Fitch. You’re the poster child for crime. And what did he do, anyway?” He bumped Charlie with the toe of his ratty Converse. “It’s not like you to take a life unless you’re told to.”

I crossed my arms. “There have been plenty of exceptions.”

“But why him?” Ripley demanded. “Hmm?”

“Look.” Stooping, I grabbed Charlie’s wrist and pointed the Hex mark toward Ripley. “He took Donnie’s place.”

It wasn't true, but I wanted it to be. That way his death might give me some small dose of catharsis.

Ripley gave the tattoo a crooked smirk. “Unlucky you,” he told Charlie, then tipped his head toward me. “Did they warn you about this one?”

Charlie’s eyes bulged, and he shook his head frantically. “I don’t know what he’s talking about. I don’t know anything about any Donnie. ”

A car crawled by on the street behind us. I shifted to block any view the driver may have had of the downed man between Ripley and me.

The gangly teen settled back into his typically sullen expression. “You’ve got the wrong man,” he said.

“It’s a likely story,” I protested. A lie I seemed determined to tell even myself. “I wouldn’t admit it, either.”

Still on the ground, Charlie gaped up. Smarter than he looked to stay where he was put, though I half wished he would give me an excuse to knock him back down.

Ripley stared at the sniveling man while contemplating. “After him, there’ll be another.”

I nodded slowly. “Then I’ll kill him, too.”

Charlie let out a stammered protest while Ripley asked me, “Whatever happened to this being about Grimm? He’s the one who deserves this.”

I’d been accused of not having a plan, but one was slowly forming. It was more of an inevitability, really. Something that, once started, might prove impossible to stop.

“I’ll get to Grimm,” I replied. “After I cut down every lowlife nobody on my way to the top. They all deserve to die.”

Ripley chewed his lip. “That’s a slightly different pitch than the one I agreed to.”

“I’m not keeping you here.” I shrugged, trying to seem nonchalant.

Charlie stayed quiet while the two of us lingered overhead. I didn’t need Ripley’s permission, and I didn’t realize that I wanted it until he heaved a breath.

“If you must kill him, make it clean,” he said. “None of that barbaric boot stomping. ”

At that, Charlie bolted upright, sitting and flapping his hands. “Wait! No, wait!” he shouted, loudly enough I feared he would draw attention.

I tried to pin his mouth shut, but no action followed the thought. I cursed under my breath.

“You can’t kill me!” Charlie exclaimed, already blubbering. “We’re comrades! Brothers in arms! We’re the same!”

He kept clamoring, and I had to shut him up. Really, I had to, or risk being caught and reported to the Capitol. That would sabotage my tenuous relationship with Briggs—another thing I couldn’t risk.

“Charles.” I dragged out the single syllable of his name. “Charlie, I am so far above you we might as well be separate species. Which makes this the natural order of things. The strong survive.”

Charlie deserved a proper send-off, big fan that he was, but my magic was still liquor-logged. Surely I could ream enough juice out of my brain for one little murder.

I kicked the other man squarely in the sternum, hard enough I heard a crack. Charlie flew back with a whooshing grunt but didn’t make another sound before my mental tethers attached to his temples. He gasped, and I twisted, expecting a swift, sharp snap. But movement followed at a snail’s pace as Charlie’s head began a slow swivel.

His swollen eyes stretched wider, and the skin of his neck bunched and scrunched. I tried again, turning my wrist as though I could hurry things along, but the painstaking process continued.

About the time Charlie began to howl in pain, I thought I saw Ripley yawn. Whatever noise the fallen man had made before paled in comparison to the ruckus he was raising now.

I cringed and glanced around while Ripley remained unbothered.

Charlie’s cheek raked across the asphalt as his head completed a full 180-degree turn. When he fell silent at last, Ripley chimed in.

“There’s a lesson to be learned here.”

My jaw tightened. “I agree.”

With Charlie quite literally facing backward, the message seemed clear, and I knew exactly who I wanted to receive it.

Watch your back.

I hooked my shoe under Charlie’s arm and rolled him over so I could see his face. Every muscle was limp, and his eyes listed toward a distant nothing. His tattooed hand laid out to one side, and I scowled at it.

For Donovan, I told myself.

Was it, though?

Crouching, I held my hand out to Ripley. “You got a Sharpie on you?”

It was an educated guess based on having seen him coloring his nails with marker on more than one occasion.

Grumbling, Ripley fished out a Sharpie and dropped it on the asphalt beside me. I managed to grab it before it rolled away, then flicked off the cap.

I held the marker above the dead man’s face. A decision needed to be made. I could have signed it Marionette, the killer, the name Ripley claimed suited me. But I wanted credit for this. Me, not an alter ego of Grimm’s design. My lips curved in a grin as the Sharpie dragged across Charlie’s forehead and left bold, black lines in its wake.

After I finished, I capped the marker and pushed back to admire my handiwork.

F. Farrow stretched from temple to temple in sharp, slanting letters.

Marionette was a fine name, but I’d always liked mine better.