The Grimm Chronicles, Vol. 2 (4 page)

“A foolish choice,” Briar said in a concerned whisper. His eyes narrowed. “Your friend is no doubt insane to choose vacuums over
anything
.”

“Carpets?” I asked.

Seth smiled and nodded. “I got a part-time job cleaning up at a little software company downtown. It’s awesome. I don’t get to work on any projects, and I clean a lot of toilets, but it’s still really cool being around programmers. They’re nice. Incredibly weird, but nice.”

“Well congrats to you, my friend.” I glanced to the stairs to make sure Fran was still out of sight, then turned to Briar with a curious eye. “Why are
you
here?”

The rabbit’s mouth creased into a little smile. “Why, to say ‘hello.’ Of course.”

“Hello to you, too.” I smiled. “Did you guys carpool?”

The looked at each other. “Er, no,” said Briar. “I bumped into him outside the building and thought it would be polite to greet him.”

“He was visible,” Seth said.

The white fur on Briar’s cheeks puffed out. “It was intentional. I think. I
hope
.”

“So what’s the plan?” Seth asked, rubbing his hands together. “Any Corrupted that need killing?”

“OK, first off: lower your voice.” I leaned over the counter. “Secondly, you are not part of this insane secret battle for earth.”

Seth’s eyes widened. “You just made it sound so cool.”

“I must agree,” Briar added. “If I didn’t know any better, I would foolishly assume this ‘insane secret battle’ was actually fun.”

“You get my point,” I snapped. “You know what you guys could do if you’re bored? Go start looking stuff up on Thomas Jefferson. I have to write a report on him.”

Seth grimaced. “Meh. I think I’ll just read up on programming instead.”

Briar watched him walk toward the shelves on the other side of the library, then made to follow. I reached over and grabbed him by the vest.

“You OK?” I asked.

“Fine,” he said, adjusting his vest. “Never better. Why?”

I raised an eyebrow. “You were visible outside? Seth just happened to be able to see you?”

Briar’s ears lowered. “A slip-up and nothing more.”

I raised my hands in surrender. “Fine. Any new research?”

“I’ve been looking up some fairy tales to try and pinpoint whom you’re up against,” he whispered. “I do believe I found a potential Corrupted that fits perfectly into your dream about the concert of rocks.”

“
Rock
concert, Briar. It was a
rock concert
.” I glanced over his shoulder at the staircase. Still empty. Fran was really taking her time, thankfully. “Who?” I asked.

“There is a fiddler in the story
The Miser in the Bush
who had a fiddle that caused everyone to dance when he played it.”

“That’s perfect!” I whispered. “That has to be him. Now we just need to find him.”

The rabbit clicked his tongue. “I think …”

I shook my head vigorously as Fran made her way down the stairs. Briar promptly disappeared.

“Alice,” Fran said in a quiet voice, “if you’d like to leave early today … you may do so.”

“Really? Yeah! Yeah I would. Thanks, Fran!” I hurried and got Seth, nearly knocking over Invisible Briar in the process.

Outside, it was cloudy and hot, and the air felt thick and heavy. It was the kind of weather that makes your clothes stick to your skin if you stay outside for too long. There was almost certainly a storm coming.

“Crap, I hate this weather,” Seth muttered, sticking out his tongue. He tugged on his black t-shirt a few times. “Freakin’ Wisconsin.”

I nodded. “The evening run tonight is going to be sticky and gross.”

“I find it rather enjoyable,” said Briar, glancing up at the sky. “This heat reminds me of Georgia, which is always close to my heart.”

Seth rolled his eyes. “You animals need a ride home or what?”

“No, they don’t.”

The sound of that voice sent a flood of adrenaline through my body. I turned toward the street where a black limo sat waiting at the curb, shiny as if it had just been washed and waxed. My hand reached for the fountain pen in my pocket.

Sam Grayle stood beside the limo.

Chapter 3

Then the miser said, “Bind me fast, bind me fast, for pity's sake.” But the countryman seized his fiddle, and struck up a tune, and at the first note judge, clerks, and jailer were in motion; all began capering, and no one could hold the miser. At the second note the hangman let his prisoner go, and danced also, and by the time he had played the first bar of the tune, all were dancing together—judge, court, and miser, and all the people who had followed to look on.
[i]

“I do hope you’ll relax,” Sam said once Briar and I were both seated across from him inside the spacious limo. I had one hand in the pocket of my jeans, the tips of my fingers clutching the fountain pen.

“Please enjoy a canned beverage,” he added in his most cordial voice, waving a hand toward the small fridge that sat below the TV. On the TV, financial numbers from the stock market were rolling quickly across the screen. The numbers were green if the stock’s value was up, and red if the stock’s value was down. There were a lot of greens.

“We don’t need your hospitality,” I said.

There was the unmistakable sound of a soda can being opened. I turned and saw Briar bring a can of cola to his mouth.

He shrugged. “I was thirsty. But I’ll have you know I shan’t thank him for it!”

Sam smiled. It seemed forced, unnatural on his hardened face. He was wearing a gray suit coat—like always—and a dark red tie.

“So what do you want?” I asked, unwilling to sit back in the comfortable seat. Beside me, Briar sipped his soda, clutching the can with both paws.

Sam crossed his legs. Between us was a small circular table cluttered with documents. He sighed, tapping on the documents a few times. “Away with the pleasantries, then. I have a tip for you.”

“A tip?” I glanced at Briar. His long ears perked up, bumping into the ceiling of the limo and folding over.

Sam nodded. “There is a … property that I have an intense desire to own. A mansion located downtown.”

“I thought you had Edward’s mansion.”

“No, young lady.” He rolled his dark eyes. “I sold that mansion as soon as I removed the skeletons. That money is sitting in my bank where it belongs. I want this
new
mansion to live in. But as of right now, it’s officially an orphanage.”

“Oh, so you just want me to kick some orphans out on the street,” I grumbled. “Great. That sounds like a ton of fun, Mr. Grayle. When I’m done, are there any puppies you’d like me to kill?”

He sighed. “This particular mansion is the very reason I moved Grayle Incorporated to Milwaukee in the first place. I’ve had my eye on it for nearly two decades, but its owner is a fickle one. To put it bluntly, she’s a wrinkled old prune. A dangerous one at that.”

Briar smacked his lips together. “Rather rude of you not to offer us something to eat.”

Sam waved a hand to the little pullout wooden drawer under our seat. Briar reached in, grabbing a handful of expensive-looking individually wrapped crackers with the product name written in glossy silver letters. A pile of crumbs quickly gathered in his lap.

“As I was saying,” the Corrupted dwarf continued, “I’ve been spending a good portion of my free time digging into the personal life of the old hag who runs the orphanage. It would be political suicide to publicly go after such a well-intentioned institution, so I thought perhaps a little blackmail would work better.”

“Classic Corrupted,” Briar scoffed. A mouthful of crumbs exited his mouth in the process.

Sam ignored him. “But I found little, if anything, on the woman’s history. I realized then and there that I was searching for the wrong information.” He reached out and grabbed one of the pieces of paper sitting on the table. He handed it to me.

“
The Juniper-Tree
,” I read. The next words were familiar enough: “By the Brothers Grimm.”

“I take it you can check your copy and see if any of the characters in this particular story have already been … ah,
eliminated
, so to speak.” He saw the surprised look on my face and frowned. “Oh come now. Of
course
I know about the book with the names crossed out. Do you think me a fool?”

“No,” I grumbled. I stared at the piece of paper. It was just one page of the story, but it was familiar enough: a horrible stepmother kills her husband’s first son, and of course chaos ensues. “Who do you think it is from this story?”

“No doubt the stepmother,” Sam said. “From what I know about the head of the orphanage,” he checked another piece of paper on the table, “Ms. Gwyneth York bears a striking resemblance to the stepmothers of the Grimms’ fairy tales: stern, cold, authoritative.”

I smiled. “So you could potentially be one as well?”

Briar coughed out bits of cracker, chuckling.

Sam Grayle’s face darkened. “Laugh it up, furball.”

I looked down at the paper again. “But the stepmother dies at the end. She’s crushed by a stone.”

“Ah, not quite,” Sam said with a raised finger. “She disappears, but she doesn’t die. I know this for a fact because I happened upon her in the year 1845. Back then, I was still mining for gold anywhere I could. The stepmother, who’d taken the name Fran Merkel, was hiring miners to dig into a pit.”

“Curious,” Briar said, narrowing one eye. “Why a pit?”

Sam shook his head. “It was never specified. But she was clearly looking for something. And when she didn’t find it, she moved west and started the process all over again. I don’t believe she knew I was a Corrupted, but I could smell it on her well enough. She had the nasty tendency to let her miners die rather than spend the extra money reinforcing the mine walls.” He smiled. “It would have been admirable had I not found myself on the wrong end of it so many times.”

I tapped the piece of paper, thinking. “The dreams I’ve had … it was in a big house. A mansion. I heard kids. This has to be the same house in my dreams.”

“Good,” said the dwarf. He leaned back. “Then I can trust you to complete this task in a reasonable amount of time.”

“Yes,” I said. “Definitely. But first, I need to go up to Minneapolis.”

The limo stopped. I glanced out the window: we were parked outside my house. Sam was staring at me.
Glaring
at me.

“Why, exactly, do you need to go to Minneapolis?”

“Because there’s a crazy Corrupted fiddler making people dance until they pass out and then sucking weird blue smoke from them.”

The dwarf didn’t say anything at first, probably expecting me to add a “Just kidding!” Finally, a low growl escaped his throat. “Very well. But I expect this to be completed soon. That was our agreement, Alice.”

“I’ll live up to it,” I said. “You’ll get your mansion, and you’ll get it soon.”

Sam said nothing at first, then leaned over and reached into his pocket. Briar immediately clutched my arm, spilling the last few unopened packages of crackers to the floor. I pulled out the fountain pen, ready to strike.

Sam raised an eyebrow, then withdrew a twenty-dollar bill. He held it out.

“What’s that?” I asked.

The dwarf smiled. “Gas money.”

“Well!” Briar said once the limo had driven off. “We certainly could have done without that. Such a gloomy end to a perfect day.”

“I guess.” I walked up the driveway with him, spinning the fountain pen around in my palm. “Still, that twenty bucks could have come in handy. Me and my scruples.”

“Scruples?” the rabbit asked, his whiskers twitching.

“Yeah. It means
ethics
or
principles
. I didn’t want to take the money because I didn’t want to … well, I just didn’t want to take money from someone like him.”

“Ah. Perfectly understandable. Um …” He tapped me on the shoulder before I could open the front door. “If you could, just check first to see if the coast is clear? The soda has made me feel out of sorts, and I fear I might accidentally turn visible.”

I went inside first to make sure the coast was clear, then shooed Briar upstairs.

“Alice?” my mom called out from the kitchen.

“Yeah, Mom.” I hung my purse on the coat rack beside the front door. My mom had done us all the favor of getting our autumn jackets from the basement in preparation for the cool weather to come. They were hanging from big (my dad’s dark leather jacket) to small (my violet windbreaker).

“We’re eating dinner in one hour. Can you please clean your room?”

“What do you mean?” I asked. Totally a teenager kind of question, I know! But sometimes I liked giving her a tough time.

“I mean pick up your bras and your undies,” Mom called out.

Even in the empty living room, my face reddened. “Geez, OK. Where’s Dad?”

“He’ll be home in half an hour.”

I went upstairs. Briar was already at the computer, checking his email. Yup, the rabbit had email now. And he had quite a few unread messages, too.

“Who are all those from?” I asked, glancing over his shoulder.

“Professors, historians and the like,” he answered. His paw waved me away. “If you don’t mind, I’m trying to get some work done.”

“You sound like my dad from when I was a kid,” I said, picking up all of the clothes littering my floor. I tossed them in the hamper in my closet. “Put on …”

“The
Thinking
playlist?” Briar suggested.

“Yes. Definitely. Let’s do some thinking.”

Pearl Jam played through the speakers. Next up would be Death Cab for Cutie and then Dessa and then some good old-fashioned Neil Young. It was the first mix Briar and I had compiled together. We’d titled it
Thinking
because we liked to believe it got our minds going. Music has that power, you know?

“We need to find more information about this orphanage,” Briar said. “We need to know what we’re up against.”

“We know already.” I tossed another armload of clothes into the hamper. “Mean stepmother who killed her husband’s kid. Totally evil. Probably killing the orphans or something else equally awful.” I groaned. “And then there’s the fiddler in Minneapolis who’s doing who-knows-what to his audiences.”

“Double dreams are incredibly rare,” said the rabbit, very casually updating his Facebook status to “Reading.” As if I wouldn’t notice.

I sat down on my bed, scrolling through the list of text messages. Three of them were from Trish, reminding me about my date. One was from Seth, reminding me about a monster movie playing on Channel 42 tonight.

“We will have to choose whom to confront first,” said Briar. “With any luck, your dream tonight will make things clearer. We …” He let out a cute little bunny groan. His paw went to his stomach. “Oh dear. I do believe that dastardly dwarf has poisoned me.”

“Are you OK?” I leaned forward, resting a hand on his furry forehead. “You don’t have a fever … I don’t think so, at least. I have no idea how to tell if you’re sick or not! What do I do? Should I call a vet?”

“Ung …” He groaned again, leaning back in my chair. “He’s poisoned me. I’m done for! This is how the story of Br’er Rabbit finally ends! A can of poisoned drink and now I’ll be pushing up daisies before dawn! I … I …”

His eyes crossed. His mouth opened. A loud burp escaped.

We both looked at each other. His ears raised a bit.

“I feel much better now.”

I shook my head. “You’re gassy. Geez, you had me worried, you big doofus. I’ll get you some milk after I eat. Until then, lie down.” The rabbit did was he was told. I smiled. “Good boy.”