Indexing (Kindle Serial) - By Seanan McGuire Page 0,1

they do hear about the deaths.

There’s no dress code in my office, not even for the field teams, since many of us have reasons to avoid the more common suits and ties. I still liked to keep things formal. I pulled a plain black suit out of my closet, selecting it from a rack that held ten more, all of them virtually identical. Pairing it with a white button-down shirt and a black tie left me looking like an extra from the set of Men in Black, but that didn’t bother me much. Clichés are relatives of the fairy tale, and tropes aren’t bad; they go with the territory.

My gun and badge were on the nightstand next to my SPF 200 sunscreen. I scowled at the bottle. I hate the smell of the stuff—it smells like a shitty childhood spent locked in the classroom during recess because the school couldn’t take responsibility if I got burned, but also like trying to find the right balance between flesh-toned foundation and sun protection. None of that changed the fact that if I went out without lathering up, I was quickly going to change my complexion from Snow White to Rose Red. “Lobster” is not a good look for me.

My phone rang as I was finishing the application of sunscreen to the back of my neck. I glanced at the display. Agent Winters. “Answer,” I said curtly, continuing to rub sunscreen into my skin.

The phone beeped, and Sloane’s voice demanded, “Where are you?”

“In my bedroom,” I said, reaching for a tissue to wipe the last of the clinging goo from my fingers. “I’m getting ready for work. Where are you?”

“Uh, what? Are you stupid, or just stupid? Or maybe you’re stupid, I haven’t decided. Have you checked your texts this morning?”

I paused guiltily. I hadn’t taken my phone into the bathroom while I showered, and I could easily have missed the chime that signaled an incoming text. “Let’s say I didn’t, to save time. What’s going on?”

“We have a possible seven-oh-nine kicking off downtown, and management thought that maybe you’d be interested in, I don’t know, showing the fuck up.” Sloane’s voice dropped to a snarl on the last few words. “Piotr sent everyone the address ten minutes ago. Most of the team is already en route.”

Full incursions are rare. We usually get one or two a month, at most. Naturally, this one would kick off before I’d had breakfast. “I’ll be there in five minutes,” I said.

“You don’t even know where—”

“Good-bye, Sloane.” I grabbed the phone and hit the button to hang up on her with the same motion, pulling up my texts as I bolted for the door. Even obscure branches of law enforcement can break the speed limit when there’s a good reason, and a Snow White starting to manifest downtown? Yeah, I’d call that a damn good reason.

#

There are a few things you’ll need to know about fairy tales before we can get properly started. Call it agent orientation or information overload, whatever makes you feel more like you’ll be able to sleep tonight. It doesn’t really matter to me.

Here’s the first thing you need to know: all the fairy tales are true. Oh, the specific events that the Brothers Grimm chronicled and Disney animated may only have happened once, in some kingdom so old that we’ve forgotten whether it ever really existed, but the essential elements of the stories are true, and those elements are what keep repeating over and over again. We can’t stop them, and we can’t get rid of them. I’m sure they serve some purpose—very little happens without a reason—but it’s hard to focus on that when you’re facing a major beanstalk incident in Detroit, or a gingerbread condo development in San Francisco. People mostly dismiss the manifestations, writing them off as publicity stunts or crazy pranks. It’s better that way. Not many people have the kind of ironclad sanity that can survive suddenly discovering that if you’re born a seven-oh-nine, you’re inevitably going to wind up poisoned and left for dead . . . or that rescue isn’t guaranteed, since once you go inanimate, the story’s focus switches to the Prince. Poor sap.

We use the Aarne-Thompson Index to map the manifestations as much as we can, cross-referencing fairy tales from all over the world. Not every seven-oh-nine has skin as white as snow and a thing for short men, even if Snow White is the best-known example of the breed. Not every five-eleven