Copyright © 2018 by Amanda M. Lee
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Grim & Bear It
A Grimlock Family Short Book Two
Amanda M. Lee
WinchesterShaw Publications
Contents
1. One
2. Two
3. Three
4. Four
5. Five
6. Six
7. Seven
8. Eight
9. Nine
10. Ten
Mailing List
About the Author
Books by Amanda M. Lee
1
One
14 years ago
“Redmond Quinn Grimlock!”
I jolted when my mother screeched my name, flicking my eyes to the top of the stairs while keeping a firm hold on my younger brother as he struggled to get away from me. I had every intention of meting out the punishment I believed Braden deserved – which was grand in scale and design – even if it meant getting in trouble. I mean, what good is it to be the oldest if you can’t lord it over your younger siblings?
“Let me go!” Braden, two years younger than me, kicked at my knee to get me to fold. When it came to fighting, he was my greatest nemesis even though he was twenty pounds lighter than me. He was a scrapper by nature, which is why I liked messing with him.
“Oh, I’m not letting you go.” I made sure not to cut off his oxygen supply but refused to release my grip. I heard people talking at the top of the stairs and was fairly certain my father had joined my mother there. He must have heard her yelling and decided to investigate. “You went through my stuff. We talked about what would happen if you went through my stuff and you did it anyway. You’ve earned what’s about to happen.”
“And what’s about to happen?”
I cringed at the new voice, quickly darting my eyes to the bottom of the stairs, to where my father stood. Somehow he’d managed to sneak down without making a sound. He was good like that. In fact, he was good at a lot of things.
Cormack Grimlock was an imposing sight. He was two inches taller than me – although it felt as if I was gaining on him every week – and he was strong like a great white shark. He was the only one in the house who could take me in a fair fight. I’m only slightly bitter about that, by the way.
Even though the look on my father’s face promised mayhem I remained calm. My mother taught me that. Grimlocks are prone to histrionic fits and drama, so the way to beat most of them – including my father – is to remain calm. That was the single greatest lesson she ever taught me, and I took it to heart.
“This is private,” I volunteered without hesitation. “It’s brother stuff.”
I considered Dad a calm man. He didn’t fly off the handle without reason (unless my sister got him going, but more on her later) and he rarely interjected himself in disputes between his children, which I appreciated. He was a proponent of the “things will work out” philosophy of child rearing. Of course, he broke his own rules when Michigan weather forced us all indoors with one another for an extended period, and even though we lived in a house as big as a castle the walls often felt as if they were closing in.
For the record, he blames that phenomenon on having five kids within a few years of each other. He made the decision to do that – I think things would’ve been better if he’d stopped after me – so I don’t have much sympathy for him on those days when the screaming and yelling (and hair pulling, wedgies and occasional baseball bat-armed chases) get to him. He couldn’t keep his hands off my mother (apparently multiple times) and he knows where babies come from. I don’t care how much he whines; he did this to himself.
“It’s brother stuff, eh?” Dad furrowed his brow as he moved away from the stairs and into the limited light of Grimlock Manor’s basement.
While the space on the bottom floor was extensive – I wasn’t lying about the house being the size of a castle – we didn’t spend much time down there. Dad had a wine cellar, and the Christmas and Halloween decorations occupied one of the storage rooms, but for other than that, no one ventured into the basement unless we were trying to hide something from our parents. My father was well aware of that, which is why I wasn’t surprised to find him searching the shadows for hints to the mayhem we had planned.
“Brother stuff,” I confirmed. “You don’t have to get involved.”
“That’s not what Aisling said,” Dad countered, causing me to have to bite my cheek to keep from cursing. Dad was a stickler about swearing. We could beat each other to a pulp if we felt like it but dropping the F-word was enough to earn a week’s grounding. Yeah, he’s weird that way.
“And what did Aisling say?” I gritted out, annoyance rushing up to grab me by the throat as I worked overtime to keep from exploding. Aisling is the sister I mentioned earlier. She’s five-hundred pounds of terror hidden behind a hundred-pound angelic mirage who manages to sweet talk my father into her way of thinking even when she should be tossed in a straitjacket and locked away for the rest of her life.
“Aisling said you were terrorizing Braden,” Dad replied without hesitation.
“I’m not terrorizing him.” I gave Braden’s neck a good shake to get his attention. “I’m not terrorizing you, am I?”
There is an unwritten rule in the Grimlock house. Once you make it past the age of ten, if you are caught tattling you are ostracized. That means no fun and games with the pack. No access to the candy stash that we painstakingly worked to keep secret from our mother. No built-in alibis when you were going to be late and didn’t want Dad to find out. You are essentially an outsider in your own home.
I might have been the one teaching Braden a lesson, but I knew he’d ultimately take my side against our father.
“We’re just playing a game,” Braden said smoothly, straightening when I released my grip and fixing Dad with a flat smile. “It’s no big deal. Honest.”
“Really?” Dad didn’t look convinced, which I didn’t take as a good sign. “Aisling told things differently.”
“Last week Aisling said there was a monster in her closet and she needed you to read her a bedtime story to wait it out before she could go to sleep,” I pointed out.
“So?” Dad was unruffled. “What does that matter?”
“She’s almost fourteen,” I replied. “She’s too old for bedtime stories.”
“She’s still my baby and she can have story time as long as she wants it,” Dad shot back. “For the record, though, she didn’t really want story time. She wanted to talk about something else and used story time as a ruse.”
Braden and I exchanged a quick look. That was … interesting. That was the best word I could come up with to describe the jolt of curiosity that crawled through my brain. If Aisling was working Dad hard enough to isolate him, that probably meant we would suffer. And, by “we,” I mean all of her brothers. That’s simply the way she operates.
“I’ve lost track of what we were talking about,” I admitted after a beat. “What were we talking about again?” Sometimes being distracted works to get Dad so annoyed with the conversation that he stalks away in disgust. I gave it a shot, but the look on my father’s face told me it was a miscalculation – a bad one.
“You were down here torturing Braden because you think he went through that stash of – ahem – educational materials that you keep in the footlocker in your bedroom,” Dad sai
d dryly.
Uh-oh! He knew more than I’d thought. That meant Aisling had been flapping her gums, as usual. She was the only one who got away with ratting out a sibling without the requisite shunning. It wasn’t even entirely due to her machinations. As the only girl in a family with four brothers, she’s a bit spoiled. And, sadly, I’m responsible for some of the spoiling. She used to be much cuter, and we somehow created a monster without realizing it until it was too late to reverse the process.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I lied.
Dad folded his arms over his chest and regarded me with unveiled agitation. “Redmond, you’re an adult now.”
“I know. That’s why I have a full-time position as a reaper.” I puffed out my chest and grinned. Yeah, that’s another thing. We’re not a normal family on one other level. Besides the fact that we have five kids sharing the same roof – all within five years of each other – we also reap souls for a living. That’s something very few people brag about, but the Grimlocks tend to stray far from the “normal” side of the scale, which is what I prefer.
I’d graduated from high school five months ago and immediately went into training for the family business. Two weeks ago I was released from probation and officially welcomed to the reaper fold, which meant I could go out on jobs without supervision. It was a big day for me because it meant I was officially an adult, even though I still lived in my parents’ house and tortured my siblings when they went through my stuff.
“Yes, you’re a full-time reaper who is in the basement acting like a child with your younger brother,” Dad noted. “You’re supposed to be a professional.”
“I’m not working.”
“No, but you claim you’re an adult,” Dad pointed out. “How can you be an adult when you’re in the basement threatening to lock your younger brother in the dungeon?”
Hmm. That was interesting. Apparently Aisling had been talking even more than I’d envisioned. I certainly didn’t mention my plan to lock Braden in the dungeon to Dad. I knew better than that.
“I think Aisling misheard,” I offered. “Braden and I were just messing around.”
“So you weren’t going to lock him in the dungeon?” Dad challenged.
“Of course not.” That was a lie I’d ended up locked into now, which I really hated. I didn’t see where I had much choice, though. “Like I said, we’re just messing around.”
“Right.” Dad smoothed his onyx hair as he regarded me with suspicious purple eyes. All of us – all five of us without exception – get our looks from him. We all have midnight-black hair and lavender eyes that are so different they cause people to stop and take notice no matter the situation. Our poor mother, Lily Grimlock, is fairer than the rest of us and looks like a complete outcast when we go out as a group.
“I’m not lying,” I said. “We were just doing some brotherly bonding when you happened upon us.”
“Brotherly bonding in the basement?”
Braden and I nodded in unison. “Yes.”
“They’re lying,” a grating voice announced from the stairwell as a head poked out. I knew even before seeing her that Aisling had decided to insert herself into the situation. She was known for wreaking havoc from one wing of the house to the other. There was no way she’d sit back and do nothing after lighting a fire under Dad and aiming him in our direction. That’s not how she played the game.
“We’re not lying,” Braden fired back, his eyes filling with fury at the sight of Aisling. Of all my siblings, Braden and Aisling fight the most. They’re like toothpaste and orange juice … meaning they leave a bad taste in your mouth if you spend too much time with them. “Have you ever considered that maybe she’s lying, Dad?”
For his part, Dad looked annoyed with the argument. He was used to being dragged into petty disputes, although those had dried up some once we hit our teen years. We preferred to keep the fighting amongst ourselves because it was in our best interests to keep Dad and Mom out of it.
Aisling was the only girl, though, and had Dad wrapped around her finger. The problem is, in addition to being a pain in the butt, Aisling is also ridiculously smart. She goes to Dad with the truth ninety-five percent of the time, reserving the lies for herself and her bad behavior. That’s why she gets away with murder and basically outsmarts us at every turn. We’re nowhere near as diabolical as she is.
“I don’t believe she happens to be lying to me on this one,” Dad replied, choosing his words carefully.
“And why do you believe her over us?” Braden challenged.
“Because I happen to know the sort of material Redmond keeps in that footlocker,” Dad replied without hesitation. “I’ve seen it on multiple occasions.”
My cheeks burned, and I was sure they were turning red. Thankfully the lighting in the basement was poor, so my father wasn’t likely to notice. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I choked out.
“He’s talking about those magazines with the naked ladies you have,” Aisling sneered, taking up position behind Dad and fixing me with a look that promised trouble. She was paying me back for something I did to her earlier and she wanted me to know it. The only person she didn’t want to know about her plan was Dad. “I am uncomfortable with trash like that in my house.”
Dad slid Aisling a sidelong look. “You’re uncomfortable with trash like that in your house?”
Aisling bobbed her head and folded her arms across her chest. She was ridiculously thin, a slight frame and narrow shoulders offsetting a huge personality. She still had a bit of growing to do, although she was starting to fill out in a way that made me uncomfortable because when I looked at her I saw a child. When certain teenaged boys looked at her these days, they were starting to see something else. I didn’t like that one bit.
“I don’t like it,” Aisling repeated. “It’s disrespectful. Girls are more than just boobs, and those girls in Redmond’s magazines are all boobs and other naked stuff.”
“Yes, well, those magazines are really none of your concern,” Dad shot back. “I warned you about going into Redmond’s room. Why are you looking through his belongings?”
Hmm. This was interesting. Dad was suddenly turning on Aisling, a rare occurrence.
“I didn’t go in his room.” Aisling adopted an innocent expression. If she felt the situation slipping away from her, she didn’t show it. In fact, she looked more confident than ever. “Braden went into his room and was looking at the magazines. Redmond caught him, and that’s how we ended up in the basement with Redmond threatening to feed Braden to the basement snakes. Don’t go turning this around on me.”
Instead of reacting with anger, Dad merely heaved out a sigh. “You get more like your mother every day.”
“I’m sure she’ll love hearing that.”
Dad frowned. “Definitely like your mother.” He made an odd throat-clearing sound before turning back to us. I could see the reticence on his face even as I resigned myself to a dressing down. “You boys need to stop fighting. There’s no reason for it. As for the snake threats, stop telling Aisling there are snakes in the basement. You know it gives her nightmares.”
“I’ll give her something to have nightmares about,” Braden threatened.
Aisling didn’t play the victim when she met Braden’s gaze, something defiant haunting the depths of her eyes. While she wasn’t above tattling, she also had no problem fighting her own battles. She was small and not as physically strong as the rest of us, but what she lacked in muscle mass she made up for with a diabolical brain.
“Let’s not turn this into a thing,” I suggested, holding up my hands. “There’s no reason to turn this into a thing.”
“I agree.” Dad was firm as his gaze bounced between faces. “I don’t see why these arguments keep popping up. You are almost adults.”
“I’m still your little girl,” Aisling cooed, linking her arm with Dad’s and resting her cheek against his side. “You’ll always be my daddy, no matter what.”
“Oh, geez,” Braden and I muttered in unison.
I would like to say Aisling’s rather obvious manipulation didn’t work on my father, but the kid is a master at melting my father. He’s the butter and she’s the freaking frying pan. She knows exactly what she’s doing.
Dad patted Aisling’s head as he beamed at her. “Have I ever mentioned that you’re my favorite?”
This time the look Braden and I shared was resigned. Aisling was going to get her way no matter what. The question was: What was she after this time? She only got involved in our domestic squabbles when she wanted something for herself. I had no idea what that “something” was this go-around.
“No, but I’m glad that I’m your favorite.” Aisling’s smile was so wide it almost swallowed her entire face. “Does that mean I get to be in charge of myself when you and Mom go out for dinner? I don’t want you to leave Redmond in charge of me because he’ll be mean and try to punish me for what happened here, and that doesn’t seem fair because I was trying to save Braden and all.”
And there it was. I forgot my parents were going out for the night. That meant I was in charge of my siblings – for all the good it did, because none of them ever listened to me – and I had the ability to boss them around for at least five hours. Well, well, well. Things were looking up.
“You still have to listen to your brother,” Dad countered, causing Aisling to frown. “Don’t look at me that way. It’s not my fault you’re the youngest. I wanted to have you first.”
Aisling didn’t bother to hide her eye roll. “I think that I should be put in charge, not Redmond.”
I snorted, earning a disdainful look from Aisling. “You’re thirteen.”
Grim & Bear It: A Grimlock Family Short Page 1
