The Grimm Chronicles, Vol. 1

by Isabella Fontaine

  “Come on, then,” I told him.

  He obliged, taking two steps toward me and then he was airborne, a good ten feet in the air. I clutched the hilt of my saber and drew in a long, deep breath. As he descended, I could see the terrible claws of his webbed fingers, all of them pointed directly at me. I ducked low, stepped left, and then stabbed the broken blade upward.

  Poof! The frog-creature burst apart into a thousand little papery shreds that burned away as they floated to the ground.

  “Wonderful!” Briar exclaimed, stepping out from behind the Williamsons’ garbage can. He clapped his little paws together.

  “Yeah, right,” I murmured. “You know, this whole hero business would be a lot easier if I had some super powers. That really hurt when he landed on me!”

  Briar shrugged. “Yes, well, we do what we can with what we have.”

  “And where were you, might I ask?” I stabbed a finger at his soft belly. He always wore the same outfit: slacks and a vest.

  “I was monitoring your progress,” he said, “from behind the garbage can. I did at one point offer some advice, too.”

  “You’re a real help!” I said with wide eyes, layering on the sarcasm. “I can only imagine what might have happened if you hadn’t been here. And you’re welcome, by the way.”

  “Welcome for what?”

  I started walking. Back home. I needed a bath. Maybe a few stitches. My arm was still bleeding a little bit. “For pushing you out of the way of that stupid thing. What the heck was he, anyway?”

  “He looked rather vaguely like the Frog Prince,” Briar said, hopping along beside me. “Although in the story, he turned back into a human being. I guess somewhere along the line, he started reverting back to the frog.”

  “In a totally gross way.” I stopped at the end of the alley. “Look,” I said, pointing to the circular sewer cover sitting in the street. It had been pulled back, sitting on the road.

  “Well, I guess we know where he came from, then. Wait, what are you doing?”

  “I’m cleaning up after him,” I said, pulling the heavy cover back over the opening. The metal edge stung my fingers. “Oof, this is heavy! The hero can’t even have a little super strength, eh? Can’t be too easy, can it?”

  “I didn’t make the rules,” Briar said.

  “So who did?” I asked.

  His whiskers twitched. “That’s a good question, actually.”

  I stepped back onto the sidewalk and we started walking again. We were only one block away from home. The neighborhood was quiet, not atypical for a weeknight even during the summer. “So how did this guy find me?”

  “That,” Briar said, “is an even better question. And I don’t know. It’s entirely possible he was drawn to you.”

  “Drawn to me?” I asked. “Why?”

  “Because you’re a charming young lady, obviously.”

  “Is that supposed to be a joke, rabbit? Because I’m not really in the mood.”

  Briar chuckled. “It’s in my nature. I do apologize, though. And to answer your question more honestly … in the past, I’ve noticed that the hero oftentimes emerges near the center of lots of Corrupted activity. And vice versa.”

  “You mean the Corrupted are showing up in the wonderful city of Milwaukee because of me?”

  “That, or they really like cheese.”

  I chuckled. “A Wisconsin joke. That’s a good one.”

  “One for two isn’t bad.”

  “So we have a good old-fashioned mystery on our hands, then?” I asked.

  “It would appear so. I’ll do some searching. I’ve been keeping an eye on Edward’s mansion to see what happens to it. It’s been three weeks and no one has come by. Not a police officer, not an acquaintance … no one.”

  My heart sped up a bit. Edward. Prince Charming. The guy of my dreams. The guy of my nightmares. I still thought about him—not the evil soul-sucking version of him, but the sweet version I’d been together with for nearly the entire school year. It hadn’t been easy to get over. Sometimes, at night, I slammed my fist into the pillow and cursed myself for believing he was so perfect.

  “Who normally cleans up these messes?” I asked. My house was coming up on the right. The living room light was on, which meant someone was home and watching TV. “I mean, Edward was filthy rich … if other Corrupted are out in the open like him …”

  “I shall continue my investigation.” Briar stopped at the driveway leading to my house. “Have you had any dreams yet?”

  “You mean nightmares?” I shrugged. “Bits and pieces. Nothing that makes any sense. Oh, there was a rat in one. I was following him through this narrow tunnel and there was a ladder at the end. Does that help?”

  “Not unless you know the rat’s name.”

  “Maybe this smelly Frog Prince was the last Corrupted,” I said cheerily. “Maybe they’re all gone now!”

  The rabbit’s whiskers twitched. And just like that, he disappeared.

  “Yeah,” I muttered to myself, “I don’t believe it either.”

  I went inside, momentarily distracted by thoughts of what might come next, and walked into the living room completely forgetting about the cuts on my arm.

  Dad was out of his chair in an instant. “Kitchen,” he ordered. We went into the kitchen and I sat at the stool next to our kitchen countertop while he rummaged through the cabinets by the fridge. He set hydrogen peroxide, a bag of puffy cotton balls, a white bandage and some bandage tape on the counter.

  “What the heck happened?” he asked. “You’re volunteering at a library, for crying out loud. Blood shouldn’t be part of the equation.”

  “Oh. I took a shortcut home. It was dark and I brushed up against a tree. Or some branches. Or something.”

  He frowned, wrinkling his bushy eyebrows. One of the hairs was growing incredibly long. Most men Dad’s age started losing their hair, but Dad was the opposite. Especially when it came to his eyebrows, which seemed to be growing now with a mind of their own.

  “Get ready,” he said, dabbing one of the puffy cotton balls with peroxide. “Your owie is about to get owier.”

  “Dad, please! I can handle it. I—ow! Owwwww!”

  He sighed, dabbing at the three cuts. The peroxide bubbled on the surface. “Don’t want an infection, dear. Do you like the library so far?”

  “It has its moments.”

  He unwrapped the square bandage and pressed it to my arm. “Hold this,” he ordered, grabbing the bandage tape and unspooling enough to wrap around my arm. “Look at these muscles,” he marveled, wrapping the tape around and around. “You look like you could bench-press a car.”

  “Maybe I could,” I said.

  He tied off the tape. “Good as new. What are you up to? Do you want to watch a movie or something? Mom will be home from the store pretty soon.”

  I shrugged. “I dunno.”

  He placed his hands on his hips, his favorite position for lecturing and/or badgering. “Are you still bummed out about Edward?”

  “Um … yes.” Maybe a little. Although “bummed out” didn’t seem appropriate under the circumstances. I’d told my parents that Edward and I had simply broken up. I hadn’t had to “fake” being upset, either. I had been upset … just not for the normal reasons you’d expect when dating a high school boy.

  Dad put an arm around my shoulder, careful not to touch the bandage. “Sometimes, you meet someone who you end up really caring about, but that person turns out not to be who you thought he was.”

  Boy, you had that right, Pops.

  “People change sometimes,” he continued, leading me back into the living room. The TV was blaring, set to a news channel. “Sometimes, they decide to change for the worse.”

  “I just feel stupid for not seeing it,” I said.

  We sat down on the couch. Dad groaned, stretching his left leg out on the coffee table. “People are complex. Being in a relationship is work, and if one person isn’t willing to accept that, then sometimes it’
s better to break things off. You’ll get over it.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  He reached for the massive gray remote on the coffee table. “Now,” he said, running his thumb over the dozens and dozens of brightly-colored rubber buttons, “which one of these gets us to Netflix?”

  “Oh my gawd, Dad.” I pointed to the “DVD” button. “You have to turn on the DVD player, remember? I just taught you this last week. For, like, the hundredth time.”

  “OK … DVD …”

  I glanced at the screen, where the news program had just returned from commercial. I did a double take, then whacked the remote out of my dad’s hand before he could turn on the DVD player.

  “What the heck?” he asked.

  “Just hold on,” I said, fixated on the screen. “Who is that?”

  Dad groaned again as he picked up the remote off the floor. “Who? That guy there?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Duh. Of course. Who is that?”

  Dad looked at the short little man on the TV. The footage showed him walking into one of the buildings in downtown Milwaukee, then cut to him shaking hands with a much taller man. Someone regular-sized, I should say. The man I was asking about was much, much shorter. Like a dwarf.

  “That’s Sam Grayle,” Dad said. “He owns Grayle Incorporated. Big bank. He just bought one of the skyscrapers downtown.”

  “Does he …” I swallowed hard, “have brothers?”

  Dad scratched his head. “A few, I think. They all run the family businesses. They’re all little people, too. Midgets, I mean. Or are they dwarfs? I can’t remember what the politically correct term is. It would be good to know. Powerful men like Grayle don’t like being offended.”

  I stared at the little man as he addressed the news reporter, looking up at her and flashing a smile. He was small, wore a sharp gray business suit and had a close-cut dark beard. He looked in his mid-forties; the hair on top of his head was thick and full, greased down and combed to the side. His orange-ish skin was wrinkled a bit, like he’d been fake tanning for too long. The reporter interviewing him seemed charmed by his demeanor and laughed along with him.

  “Come on in,” he said to the camera. “Let’s give Milwaukee a tour of Grayle’s brand-new headquarters. Completely renovated.”

  The reporter, star-struck, signed off and promised a follow-up the following night. I wanted to scream at her to run, run and don’t look back. Don’t go into that building. Don’t listen to anything he says!

  … Sam Grayle was glowing.

  Chapter 2

  That night I had another strange dream. It felt jumbled and confusing, as if someone had taken all of the scenes in a movie and shaken them up and then played a few at the same time. The only thing I remembered when I woke up was the rats. Big, dark brown creatures with long slender tails that whipped around as they made their way through a dark sewer. I was following one of them; he was much smaller than the others, small enough that he could slip through the bars of a grate and enter a much smaller tunnel. It sniffed around for a while, then nibbled on something (I really don’t want to know what it was) before slipping through the grate again to join its brethren. Dozens and dozens of them.

  What did it all mean?

  I picked out a floral print ruffled blouse and a pair of white pants, then made sure to grab the fountain pen from my desk. I didn’t like stuffing it in my pocket. I liked wearing my pants tight, which made the pen stick out like a sore thumb. It was terribly noticeable. Just a week ago, Tricia and Seth had come over to console me over the “break-up,” and Tricia had noticed the bulge in my pocket immediately.

  “Darling, school is over. It’s summer!” she said. “Unless you’re an undercover reporter, that pen has got to go. It’s distracting attention away from your legs.”

  She was right: I needed to carry around the pen, but I also needed to not look like a total weirdo. I could keep it in my purse, but what if it was stolen? The night of Edward’s death, he’d picked up the pen and it had burned him … was that true if anyone picked up the pen, or just Corrupted?

  “A good scientist always runs tests,” I said aloud.

  “Tests about what?”

  I spun around, letting out a quick “Ah!” and nearly karate-chopping Briar right off my desk. “What is wrong with you?” I asked.

  The rabbit innocently looked around. He was sitting on top of my desk, next to my laptop, his legs crossed. “I don’t believe anything is wrong with me.”

  “OK listen, rabbit. From here on out, we need to set some ground rules. First and foremost, you do not just appear in my room. I like having my privacy. Get it?”

  “Not especially.”

  “Well, too bad. From here on out, you knock gently on the door and I let you in.”

  He sighed a long, exasperated sigh. “I hate rules.”

  “Too bad! You’re here to help me. So I’m in charge.”

  “Fine, fine. Then I have a few rules myself …”

  “Nope.” I grabbed my purse from the bed, stuffing a tube of lipstick inside.

  “It would be nice to have some diced carrots available from time to time …”

  “Nope.”

  He followed me to the door. “Well at the very least leave me a head of lettuce or a cup of milk! I can get quite dehydrated running around doing my investigations …”

  “Nope.” I opened the door and turned back to him. “You want a cup of milk? You get it from the fridge. I swear, you’re like a thirteen-year-old version of me! I used to always say that to my dad. ‘Dad, go get me something to drink.’ And he’d always respond, ‘What am I, you’re servant?’ Gawd.” I closed my eyes and rubbed my throbbing temple. “I’m turning into my parents.”

  “Hardly an insult. They seem quite delightful, actually.”

  I stepped into the hallway, closing the door before Briar could follow.

  Downstairs, Mom was making breakfast. The delicious smell of greasy meat hit my nostrils even before I could make my way into the kitchen. Dad was sitting at the table, reading the newspaper. Mom had two skillets sizzling on the stovetop: one for bacon and one for eggs.

  “Good morning, sweetie,” she said.

  “You’re too cheery for the morning,” I told her, sitting down at the table.

  Dad folded his paper and glanced at the kitchen clock hanging over the fridge. “It’s barely morning, to be fair. Don’t be grumpy with us just because we get up before the crack of noon.”

  “It’s eleven!” I exclaimed. “You’re exaggerating, just like you always do.”

  Mom set a plate of eggs and bacon and toast on the table. “Do you want some cheese?”

  “No,” I said, using my fork to pile eggs and bacon on top of a slice of toast.

  “Save some for us,” Dad said with a laugh.

  “She’s hungry,” Mom told him sternly. “All that exercising is making her hungrier.” She looked at me and frowned. “You’re not taking steroids, are you?”

  “Mo-om!”

  “I’m just asking, that’s all.” She sat down at the table, drinking from her green Madeline Associates coffee mug. It was the name of her ad agency, the agency that seemed to go out of its way to ensure Mom had the strangest working hours on the planet.

  “Looks like good weather this weekend,” Dad murmured.

  I turned to take a look at the weather section of the paper; something over Dad’s shoulder caught my eye: the refrigerator door was open. My first thought was: oh, the wind blew it open. My second thought was: Alice, that’s the most ridiculous thought you’ve ever had. My third thought? Well, maybe I was going crazy.

  But then the milk jug floated out of the fridge. I realized what was happening and glanced nervously at my parents: Dad was still reading his newspaper and Mom, thankfully, had tasked herself with spreading jelly over three slices of toast.

  I could have killed that rascally rabbit.

  “Hey,” I said, so suddenly that they both gave a little start. “Hey, look at this
.” I pointed to my forehead. “Do you see this?”

  Both Mom and Dad leaned in closer, squinting. Behind them, the floating jug of milk was tipping over, pouring its contents into a floating glass.

  “It’s like, some kind of zit, right?” I asked. “I mean, what else can it be?”

  “I don’t see anything,” Mom said, leaning in closer.

  “You have too much makeup on,” Dad said. He returned to his paper. “Probably skin cancer.”

  Mom sighed, but before she could turn to admonish him, I pointed again. “No, it’s like a mole or something. Don’t you see it?”

  Mom shook her head. “No, I don’t see anything.” Behind her, the jug returned to the fridge. The floating glass of milk tipped, and as the liquid escaped the lip it disappeared. Right down the invisible rabbit’s gullet.

  “Well,” I said slowly, watching the glass land on the countertop next to the fridge, “I guess it’s gone. It probably was just a zit then.”

  Mom leaned back, eyeing me with more than a fair bit of suspicion. “Are you sleeping all right?”

  No. “Yes. Fine. Wonderful. I just read a lot at night.”

  Mom leaned in, clutching her mug in both hands. Here we go: interrogation time. “What are you reading?”

  Oh, just an old copy of Grimms’ Fairy Tales with lots of names crossed out. Studying up on who’s still alive and causing all sorts of mayhem and destruction all over the planet. Corrupted creatures that grow more evil with each passing year, Mom. “Books about monsters.”

  “That’s why she’s staying awake all night,” Dad said with a smirk. “She could never handle any of those monster movies she used to watch as a kid.”

  “Dad, I’m eighteen. I can handle monsters.”

  “Even aliens?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “Maybe …”

  Mom chuckled. “I remember when you showed her Aliens and she had to sleep with the lights on for an entire month. How old was she?”

  “Oh, about sixteen or so!” Dad said with a wry smile.

  I pulled the magic pen out of my pocket and set it on the table. “OK, well, I’d love to sit here and be laughed at all day, but I’ve got to get to the library. Oh, Dad, will you hand me my pen?”