Armageddon Rules Read Free

watched this movie—all in French—you’ve got to see it.” I stopped, since Ari’s eyes glazed over like I’d wrapped her in a plastic bag again. Liam stayed by my side through three days of foreign-language films. I think he spent more time watching me than the movies.
    “You’re thinking about him. You get that smile when you do.” Ari blushed, happy for me that at least I’d found my happy, if not the ever after.
    “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 his head, managing to keep it attached. Not bad for someone who’d been dead a few decades.
    “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 at black bound tomes as if counting. He 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 Ari signed before moving in, I’d have worried. Your normal rental agreement detailed due dates and damage waivers. Grimm’s covered every conceivable way an evil spirit might want to harm a person in the house. We rented a truck to move the paper version of the contract after Grimm drafted it. I took out the book the lich pointed to and gave it a glance, trying to make sense of triangle-based hieroglyphics.
    “I don’t read anything but English.” I went to put the book back, but he held out a hand, stopping me. One claw touched the book and a vapor-like mist seeped out from what remained of the finger bones. 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.”
    He shook his head again and pointed up the stairs. That got my mind to work. Ari, through no fault of her own, was a princess. Born to a royal family, though the royal families these days had long since traded throne rooms for boardrooms. My point being, as part of their contract with the universe, members of the royal families had what could only be described as ridiculous luck.
    Reality itself bent over backwards to make 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