The rest of the afternoon, I stood behind the desk and checked out books for people. It wasn’t my job. Heck, I don’t think I was supposed to do it at all! But Fran stayed in the office with the door closed, making phone calls with the same distressed look on her face.
I couldn’t help but glance over my shoulder once in a while. I mean, sure, she was a grouch. She could have been nicer. Her perfume stunk, too. But whatever was happening was bad, and I found myself feeling guilty for letting her attitude get to me at all. She still wasn’t as grumpy as any of my bosses from the previous summer when I was cooking French fries for eight hours a day.
When the door finally opened again, it was time to close up. Fran was clutching a wet tissue in one hand and exhaled deeply as she glanced around the empty library.
“Is everyone out?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She nodded. “Let’s go then. I have to work tomorrow morning too, you know.”
“I know, ma’am. Do you want me to vacuum?” I asked.
She sighed, staring at the fiction section. “No. I just want to go home.”
We walked silently toward the entrance. “Oh, my purse!” I said, slapping my forehead.
“Just go get it quickly,” she murmured, staring longingly at glass doors.
Now I knew something was seriously wrong. She’d just passed on a chance to chastise me!
I hurried back to the librarians’ office. Now, I’ll have you know that I’m not a super nosy person. In fact, I had no interest in learning about what was bothering Fran so much, especially since it was draining her of all the negative energy she usually directed at me.
But when I opened the door and saw the letter sitting on the desk next to the phone plain as day, the words written in bold caught my eye.
Foreclosure notice.
From the front of the library, Fran shut off all the lights. The room went dark. But not before I saw the fancy bank logo at the top of the letter. A cold shiver ran down my spine.
Grayle Incorporated.
Chapter 5
I returned home fully expecting Briar to still be in my bedroom. I wasn’t disappointed. He was still sitting right where I left him: at the desk, in front of the computer.
“It’s a good thing you’re here,” we both said at the same time. We gave each other a quizzical expression.
“You go first,” I said.
“Well come over here then,” he said, waving a paw at me. “Take a look at this.”
I shut the bedroom door and walked over, tossing my purse on the bed; the covers were tucked-in and neatly spread without a single wrinkle. “I take it my mother was in here to make my bed.”
The rabbit snorted. “I made your bed, if you must know. But yes, your mother did stop in to do a little snooping.”
“Oh I just knew she was doing that!” I said, stomping my foot. “What did she go through? She didn’t find my diary, did she?”
“Hmmmm …” Briar tapped his paw against his head a few times. “A few carrots would help jog my memory …”
“That’s so clichéd,” I muttered. “Why don’t you ask for something that every single cartoon rabbit hasn’t eaten?”
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll take a handful of those delicious vanilla cookies your mother hides behind the cans of corn in the kitchen cabinet.”
“She doesn’t—wait, does she hide cookies?”
The rabbit shrugged. “I guess you’ll have to go find out, now won’t you?”
I gave him a suspicious look, then left the room.
Downstairs, Mom was sitting in the living room with an old hardcover book sitting on her lap.
“How was work?” I asked.
“Boring. How was the library?” she asked, not looking up.
“Same old, same old. Put a book away in the Fiction section, then put a book away in the History section, then put a book away in the Illicit Drugs section.”
“Mmm-hmmm,” she said, still not looking up. It must have been a good book.
In the kitchen, I put together a snack of pretzels and apple slices and cheese with a glass of orange juice. I was starving. I felt like I’d upped my calorie intake by a good thousand or so a day and yet I didn’t seem to be gaining any weight whatsoever. I had no idea how many calories Briar’s bizarre training regimen was burning on a daily basis, but it was doing wonders for my eating habits. It had only taken a week for me to significantly curb my cookie eating habit.
A habit that seemed to have been picked up by another member of the family. I glanced once over my shoulder to make sure Mom was still in the kitchen, then opened up the cabinet full of canned goods. I slipped a finger between two cans of vegetables and, touching something, wiggled the package out from its hiding place.
Vanilla cookies.
“Hey Mom!” I called out. “Do we have any cookies left?”
“Not unless you bought some with your own money,” she called back. “I don’t buy that garbage for my daughter.”
“Then you won’t mind if I take a few of yours,” I mumbled, adding a handful of the little cream-colored slices to my plate of goodies.
I went back upstairs, dutifully setting the plate down on the desk. “Your cookies, dear sir.”
Briar’s paw darted out and snatched one of the cookies, popping it into his mouth faster than I could blink. “And … I … thank you,” he said between bites.
I sat on the bed, pulling the fountain pen from my pocket and setting it on my nightstand. I grabbed an apple slice and nibbled on it, staring down at my pants. “Look at this,” I complained. “The pen is leaving an outline on the fabric of my pants. They’re ruined!”
“That’s nice,” Briar said, grabbing another cookie.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “I thought you had something to tell me.” I leaned closer to the desk. “Hey! What is that?”
“Nothing!”
“Oh that better not be what I think it is,” I said, reaching over and smacking his paw away from my wireless mouse. I re-opened the browser window. “You’re using Facebook? Are you kidding me?!”
“It’s purely for networking,” Briar said defensively.
“Look at your profile picture!” I exclaimed, pointing on the screen to the little picture of a smiling, beefy-looking brown-haired stud. “You probably just stole that picture from somewhere!”
“Well I couldn’t very well put my own picture up there,” Briar countered. “Your laptop camera doesn’t do my natural good looks justice.”
“You were taking pictures of yourself?” I asked, slack-jawed. “For the past three weeks now, you’ve been preaching to me how important it is for us to not draw attention to ourselves!”
The rabbit sighed. “I must admit, you have me there. I think perhaps I was spending a little too much time on this today.”
“I’ll say … although I’m impressed you befriended two hundred people. You officially have more friends than me.”
“And yet, I feel hollow.”
“That’s because it’s not real,” I said, patting him on the shoulder. I went back to my bed, grabbing an apple slice on the way. “It’s just a social network. It’s a way to keep in touch with people, but it’s addictive, too.”
Briar said nothing.
I glanced over at him. “You OK?”
“What? Oh. Yes. Yes, of course.” He stood up from the desk and smooth out his vest, using his paw to pick away a stray seed of lint. “It was just nice to befriend them all. I was lying before … I don’t have very many friends.”
“Well,” I said, rolling my eyes. “You’re my friend, I guess.”
His ears perked up. “Is that so?”
I shrugged. “Sure. I mean, sure, I sometimes blame you for this whole hero business, but that’s not fair. You didn’t pick me. And you didn’t volunteer, either.”
“No. No. I suppose we are two peas in a pod.” He sighed. “What I was going to tell you was that I found an old website for the company t
hat used to own the Grayle Incorporated building downtown.”
“And?”
“And I do believe I have the building’s floor plans quite memorized. The Grayle fellow resides on the top floor, but the plans for that floor are intentionally blacked out.”
“Well.” I reached over and grabbed a few slices of robusto cheese. “That’s great, because you’re going to do a little spy work this weekend.”
Briar’s whiskers twitched. “Say what now?”
“I said you’re going to spy for us.”
“On who, specifically?”
“Sam Grayle, of course. Have some cheese. You can’t live on cookies.”
“I most assuredly can,” he said, but grabbed a slice of cheese anyway. “I’m hardly normal. Hence the erroneous profile picture on Facebook. And don’t you think I should be joining you this weekend in Chicago?”
“I do,” I said, “but if I’m going to be a hero—a real hero—I’m going to need to be able to handle things on my own if we ever get separated for any reason. I can’t take your help for granted.”
“Well,” Briar said, grabbing another slice of cheese. “That’s very adult of you, I must say. Still, frightening given that your most recent dream involved a legion of rats feasting on one of your fellow human beings.”
I watched him wash down his snack with my glass of OJ, gripping it with both paws. “Help yourself,” I muttered.
When he was finished, he set the glass down and wiped his mouth with one furry arm. “That was fantastic cheese. Now what were we talking about again?”
“You. Spying.”
“What am I looking for, exactly?”
“Evidence,” I said. “Hints. Foreshadowing, in the words of my old Modern Literature teacher. I don’t know. We need to find out who sent that frog creature. We need to know what they know about me.”
“Right. Can do.”
A thought came to me. “Hey, do me a favor. Look up what a foreclosure notice is.”
Briar carefully pecked at the keyboard. A new webpage popped up. “It says here a foreclosure notice is sent to the owner of a house if he or she fails to keep up with the monthly payments. If the house owner cannot make payments, the bank usually ends up seizing the property.”
“Bummer.”
“Hmmmm.” Briar leaned in closer to the screen. “It says here that sometimes a bank will foreclose on a property instead of offering the home owner another chance.”
“Double bummer.” Was that what was happening to Fran? Was she on the verge of losing her house? What would happen to her? Would she move in with Mary? Did librarians have some kind of bond, a sisterhood (or brotherhood) where they looked after each other? Or would Fran just end up on the street, homeless?
I didn’t want that. I mean, sure, karma should punish her a little for being mean. But really, a wayward spitball to the cheek was good enough.
“Just see what you can find inside the Grayle building,” I said. “On anything. Take careful notes. We need to know everything we can about these dwarfs.”
“Mmm-hmmm,” Briar murmured, clicking away on the mouse.
I sighed. “What game are you hooked on now?”
“I have no idea,” Briar said, “but the explosions are fantastic.”
That night, the dream intensified. I was following one of the rats, only this time we weren’t in a sewer at all. We were in an alley somewhere in Chicago. The alley was full of big green dumpsters and there were only three little floodlights hanging between the tall buildings, casting most of the alley in dark, forbidding shadows.
The rat scurried from dumpster to dumpster, sniffing at a little chunk of a sandwich that was laying on the ground. But the rat didn’t seem to want it, and so it kept moving father down the alley, disappearing from time to time in the darkness. I swear to you, I could smell that alley. It smelled like a urinal and an overflowing garbage filled with rotten milk. A good smell for rats, I suppose.
At the end, we turned and traipsed our way up the sidewalk, hugging the buildings closely. The street was mostly empty except for a few cars passing. It looked like a nice neighborhood: every other business we passed was either a café or some kind of store with big windows. I couldn’t see everything. I was following behind the rat, and as a result I could only get a worm’s-eye-view of the scene.
If I could just see a street name …
Suddenly, the rat stopped, pressing its body against the nearest concrete building for a moment. There was a sound of footsteps. A pat-pattering of heels on the sidewalk, growing louder and louder. Before whoever it was passed us, the rat began moving again with more urgency, turning right at the next intersection (what was the name of the street? Patterson? Pattel? I couldn’t see it well enough to be sure) and heading directly toward a smattering of patio tables farther down the block.
It was a café. A café with black outdoor furniture and a handful of young and middle-aged people sitting outside with glasses of beer, enjoying the nice evening. I could feel the warm air. A breeze picked up and then I could smell all of the late-night food sitting on the tables: pepperoni pizza, spicy buffalo wings, and hush puppies.
The rat hid underneath an empty chair at the edge of the outdoor seating area. There were a lot of conversations, and I tried to pick them out one by one to see if I could figure out where we were. But no one was talking about the neighborhood or the café. Lots of gossip, though. Someone complaining about his mother. Another person bragging about her new high score in her Castle Cats phone game.
The sound of footsteps returned. “Turn around, rat!” I commanded, but the rat either didn’t hear me or didn’t care. It stayed where it was, and the tap-tap-tap of the heels on concrete grew louder.
Finally, the rat turned, and I could see two beautiful clear slippers move by. The feet inside those slippers were pale and smooth, and the slippers looked as if they were made of glass.
The rat followed the slippers, ducking from empty chair to empty chair. We were getting closer to the other end of the outdoor seating area, where a single middle-aged man was sitting alone at a table. He had an e-reader in one hand and a glass of wine in the other, and was wearing a dressy button-down collar shirt and dark tie. He had a strong, square jaw and short, combed hair. He looked handsome, I thought. Handsome enough for someone on the verge of being labeled “old.”
The rat stopped underneath the adjacent empty table. It made a little squeaking noise and the man looked up from his e-reader. I could see Cindy’s slippers—she’d stopped right in front of his table and when he noticed her, he looked up and his face immediately lit up.
“Are you waiting for someone?” she asked.
The man smiled. “No. But maybe I should be.”
“May I sit with you?”
“I would love it,” the man said.
The chair next to him slid back, its metal legs squeaking on the concrete patio. Cindy sat down, smoothing out her long dress as she did so. Now I could see her face clearly under the soft light coming from the streetlights: she was beautiful, but aged; her hair had just a hint of gray, the lines on her face hidden away with makeup that had begun to cake. But I still recognized her.
This was the woman from my previous dream, the one who’d watched the rats eat her boyfriend like an entrée. And something told me this new guy friend of hers didn’t have too much time.
Chapter 6
Mom woke me from my terrible nightmare promptly at nine o’clock. I started awake, staring at her with wide eyes. “Where am I? Where are the rats?!”
“You’re in your bed,” Mom said with a warm smile. “Still with the nightmares? Are you thinking about Edward again?”
“Edward?” I looked around, blinking away the morning sun. “Um, yes. Yup. It’s been tough.”
She rubbed my back. “My little baby needs to see some fishies today, I think. Would that help? Maybe see a few dolphins, too?”
“Mo-om!”
She stood up from the bed. “Get dressed,
dear. Your father wants to leave by ten. You know how he gets about time.”
“I know, I know.” I waited for her to shut the door, then glanced around. “Briar? Are you there?”
There was a single knock at the door. I stared at it, unsure. Another knock.
“Come in?”
The door opened a crack. Briar slid inside, shutting it behind him. “Your mother almost bumped right into me.”
“Why were you out in the hall?”
He cocked his head inquisitively. “Because you told me to knock before entering.”
“Oh. Well … thank you. You’re all right, rabbit.”
“Same to you. Now!” He clapped his paws together. “What is the plan, dear hero?”
“I’m going to spend the next hour and a half in the car with my insane parents. You’re going to infiltrate Grayle Incorporated and figure out how much they know about me.” I thought back to the document I’d seen on Fran’s desk. “See if you can find out anything about those foreclosures, too.”
The rabbit gave a swift salute. “I shall do my best, madam!”
And just like that, we were split up for the first time.
I won’t bore you with the details of the car ride. Suffice it to say, I had my headphones on most of the time. My eyes were buried in the old copy of Grimms’ Fairy Tales, taking in some stories about characters who’d been eliminated by previous heroes, the names carefully crossed out with the magic pen. It was an amazing sight: I would never have to do battle with the big bad wolf. But Red Riding Hood was another matter entirely … she was still around …
I couldn’t find any reference to rats. There were a few critters here and there, and even a talking sausage, but I was beginning to think I was missing something. OK. So there was a woman … and the rats lived under her … and they were using her to find them food? … or did she have some weird deal worked out with them ? … or did she like to nibble on the corpses, too?
Since my mother was driving, Dad took the opportunity to regularly turn around in the front passenger seat to stay up-to-date on my reading. This was followed by “What story are you on now?” which was followed by my annoyed response, which was followed by “Why are you writing in your book? That’s not a library book, is it?”
The Grimm Chronicles, Vol. 1 Page 17
