A Grimm Legacy (Grimm Tales) (13 page)

Salina moved expertly from cage to cage calling to them and holding them still for Fredrick, like she’d done this before. He finally admitted, if only to him
self, she was an enormous help.

He disenchanted canaries, mockingbirds, jackdaws, magpies, blue jays, and robins, but there was still no Quinn. They emptied the small cages and moved to the house-like structures holding the larger birds. Fredrick eased open the cage door and waded through cranes, flamingos, and pelicans, touching each with the mangled flower until he was knee-deep in women. He moved from cage to cage, trailed by Salina. The noise in the atrium reached rock concert levels and the women drifted away, wandering back to wherever they were before they were snatched. Still, the fairy did not appear.

Hours later, his legs tired and his back aching, he straightened up from the secretary bird that transformed into a tall lanky girl with mousy brown hair and glasses askew on her nose, and looked for the next cage. Except there was no next cage. He turned in a slow circle. Although there were hundreds of women, there were no more birds.

Sidling up close to him, Salina grinned another of her wolf-like grins and he s
hied away like a nervous horse.

"She's not here." Fredrick tried to think about it logically. "There’s got to be somewhere else she's keeping her. Salina?"

Salina wouldn’t look him in the eyes. "It is not unheard of for the fairy to keep a few of her favorites in her rooms."

Fredrick's eyebrows plunged together and he tried to keep the anger out of his voice. "That would’ve been helpful to know before I disenchanted a stadium full of women. Show me."

Her smile widened at his less than civil tone. "No.” She stepped closer, backing him into a glass wall with nowhere to escape. Fredrick stared anywhere except the unnerving woman inches from him.

He exchanged more words in the last two days with non-relative members of the opposite sex than he ever had. He wanted to be home with his irritating, loud, familiar brothers. He felt he could handle dangerous jobs and even the bizarre new world he found himself in, if he were jus
t spared the social situations.

“It wouldn't do for Eulie to catch me a second time.” Salina ran one blood red fingernail down his chest. “You might not disenchant me again." She laughed at his strangled look and the beads of sweat that broke out on his forehead. She tilted her chin to a glass archway on the far wall as she backed slowly away, refusing to break eye contact. "Straight to the end of the hall.” She winked. “Good luck." Spinning away, she flipped her dark hair over h
er shoulder and sauntered away.

Realizing he was strangling the crushed flower in one fist, Fredrick quickly eased up on his grip.

He stalked through the throng of women, ignoring their squawking, and passed through the arch on the far wall. Immediately the noise level dimmed in the deserted corridor and he slowed, the low light and the chill in the air making him shiver involuntarily. There was only a bare hall of more frosted glass and the mysterious blobs of the rooms beyond. The only thing of notice was the black cat that followed him out of the atrium.

Giving the cat another quick scratch behind her ears, Fredrick watched both ends of the hallway carefully. “Don’t suppose you know where she is?”

The cat sat down, studiously ignoring Fredrick, and began washing a paw.

“Didn’t think so.”

Continuing on silent feet, he glancing over his shoulder at decreasing intervals, growing more and more nervous. The noise faded and the throbbing in his head subsided.

The corridor felt endless when he turned a sharp corner and faced a set of double doors, remarkable in the fact they were actually made of wood. Trying the
handle, it swung easily inward.

Fredrick slipped through the gap in the doors, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. Body tense, the wilted flower in a death grip, he slowly circled the room. No one. He turned his attention to the corner where hanging from a hook on a ceiling, a small black bird peeped at him from behind the bars of her cage.

"Quinn!" Fredrick said with relief.

An angry hiss cut off his shout and he whirled to face the cat that had been trailing him. Quinn cried in alarm from the corner as the cat launched itself at his face, claws extended, its face feral and frightening. Fredrick stumbled back when the cat hit an invisible barrier a foot from Fredrick's face and bounced painfully at his feet.

The eyes of the cat were burning coals glaring out of a feline face. Its body rippled and stretched in a ghastly and fantastic way. The eyes stayed the same, but now they glowered from the alarmingly familiar face of the old woman.

The flower was little more than a pearl on a stem at this point. His eyes slid past the flower to Eulie, who fruitlessly scrambled at the space in front of his legs.

She hissed at him, "She’s mine!"

Opening Quinn's cage, Fredrick held out a hand and she hopped on obediently. With what was left of the flower, Fredrick touched her head as she closed her eyes. A faint POP, and several hundred birds later, he’d found Quinn. She looked unharmed, though there was something different about her hair. She stumbled and sagged against Fredrick, who was still struggling to hold onto the flower. The witch continued to scream, trying desperately to grab them from behind the invisible barrier.

Quinn got her feet firmly under her and turned her dark eyes on him. "You came for me." She let out a shaky breath. "I wasn't sure anyone would."

Fredrick let his eyes trail toward the floor and mumbled something. He’d intend to say, “You’re welcome,” but he didn’t think that was how it came out. Quinn sh
ook her head at him and smiled.

"Is that what's keeping her at bay?" she nodded at the flower.

              "Yeah, Andi found it," Fredrick said with a dubious look at the handful of petals.

"Then I suggest we run, it doesn't look like it's got a lot of life left," Quinn said.

"Right.” Fredrick adjusted his grip on the flower. “I guess it’ll work for both of us if you hold on to me," he said, already feeling the tips of his ears tingle in embarrassment.

Quinn slid her arm through his grip until she clutched his free hand and nodded. "Let's go."

Fredrick edged around the fairy who was making headway against the barrier.

"Wretched flower! Where do they keep getting them?" she mumbled to herself as she pounded relentlessly at the air and another petal drifted from the flower. All three of the strange party paused to watch it twist in the air until it hit the ground and the hag lurched toward Fredrick and Quinn. She was now only inches away. The barrier was doing nothing for the smell drifting off the hag that brought back memories of garbage day in the dead of summer.

Hands joined, they ran. Out of the room and down the corridor, their feet slapped loudly against the glass tiles as they passed through the atrium, now silent and empty. The screams of the fairy were close behind them as Fredrick tried to remember the turns he’d taken through the castle. He glanced down at the flower, but all the petals and even the stem trailed behind them like breadcrumbs. The pearl ring was the only thing left clutched in his hand. He shoved it in his pocket, readjusted his grip on Quinn, and put on a burst of speed, practically dragging Quinn with him.

“There could be dragons and witches. If I'm right."

Andi’s frustration at Dylan was reaching critical levels.

“—been gone for hours, how—” Dylan started in on her.

“What was I supposed to do? Fredrick—” Andi argued.

“Shouldn’t have gone,” Dylan said.

If he interrupted her one more time, she was going to punch him.

Breaking through the edge of the trees, Quinn collapsed on the ground while nearby Fredrick doubled over his knees. Andi tried asking what happened, but Mr. Jackson broke in, herding them away from the trees.

"Explanations will have to wait. Eulie doesn't usually wander far from her castle, but she may be more…" here he paused as Quinn and Fredrick panted, "irked than usual. Good job, though," he said, extending a hand to Fredrick.

Fredrick gripped his hand briefly, the surprise plain on his face. Andi could see him wanting to rely on Mr. Jackson, but he didn’t know about the book. The secretive millionaire couldn’t be trusted.

A hiss sounded from across the street. An old-fashioned coach bellowed steam into the air. This one was minus its horse and hitch, with what looked like a brass hot water heater strapped to the back, making it odd and unbalanced.

Wind whipped a hole in the cloud of steam and she caught a glimpse of a bear of a man climbing into the driver's seat. Mr. Jackson strode toward the strange vehicle. Andi followed, still unsteady and wary of the odd contraption.

“What about your… car?” Dylan asked reluctantly, glancing back at the destroyed Impala.

“Forget it. There’s no way your presence hasn’t been noticed. We need to get you out of here before others come looking.”

Mr. Jackson waved them into the open double doors of the carriage. Andi ducked her heads and slid onto the leather-upholstered seats with the others.

The carriage gave an enormous lurch before the doors were fully closed. They banged shut, sliding Andi down on the seat into Dylan. The motorcycle sputtered to life behind them and followed the coach at a measured pace.

"Your hair!" Andi leaned forward and twitched a sweaty lock over Quinn’s shoulder. "It must have grown half a foot in the last few hours."

Quinn stared at the lock of black hair as if it was foreign to her. It now hovered a few inches above her waist.

"It's always grown fast, but this ridiculous," Quinn scoffed. She bundled it into a knot at her neck, like that could fix whatever was going on.

Andi caught her eye and saw the worry hidden there, but Qu
inn smiled and shrugged it off.

"Getting dragged from one world into another probably messed with it,” she tapped the door of the carriage and changed the subject. "What is this thing?"

On the inside of the carriage, gears whirred and spun where they shouldn't be. Set flush into the leather of the ceiling, doors, and floors, appearing sporadically, were springs and cogs with mysterious purposes. They turned and clicked, the muted rhythm making them feel like they were riding inside a giant clock.

"Horseless carria
ge?" Dylan guessed with a grin.

"Not really sure,” Andi responded. “It drove by and Mr. Jackson flagged it down.”

"Weird,” Fredrick rode his finger around a ticking brass cog just above his head.

"There's a lot we need to catch up on where there aren’t extra ears listening in." Andi reached into the satchel still riding on her hip and pulled out her copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales.

"You keep looking in that,” Fredrick said, leaning toward her, his eyebrows raised in question.

Andi nodded, her gray eyes a solemn contrast to her bouncing curls. "It’s why we're here. This," she tapped the cover, "is where we are."

"That's—” Dylan protested.

"Don't say impossible, not after the day we've had. She flipped the book open. “Wait until you hear this.” She cleared her throat and began reading. “There was once an old castle that stood in the middle of a deep gloomy wood, and in the castle lived an old fairy. All the day long she flew about in the form of an owl, or crept about the country like a cat; but at night she always became an old woman again—”

"It's a coincidence,” Dylan interrupted her.

Snapping the book shut, Andi gave him an annoyed look for interrupting.

“That can't be the only story with a castle and a fairy..." Fredrick trailed off, staring at the book in Andi's lap.

She shook her head, but knew how they felt. She’d hated admitting it too. "You were out cold for some
of it Dylan, it's all in here.

"And that’s not the only story in the book?” Quinn clarified.

Andi shook her head, “There are dozens.”

“Then all these people are characters in your book,” Quinn said, glancing up to where the
driver sat.

"Including Mr. Jackson," Fredrick pointed out. "But who is he?”

"I've been trying to figure it out, but it doesn't fit any of the more famous stories I know. Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty,” Andi said, listing off on her fingers. “But there are a lot of lesser-known stories he could be part of, like Jorinda and Jorindel. I won't know until I've sat down and read through it.”

“Those are all real people, wandering around here somewhere? Are we going to bump into fairy godmothers, evil witches, and fire breathing dragons?" Dylan tried to ask lightly, but his eyes were deadly serious.

"Not everything has a Disney version,” Andi said with a smirk.

“Then I’m in trouble,” Dylan said, with that odd forgetful movement toward his head again.

It occurred to Andi he was probably used to wearing a hat. "But... yeah. There could be dragons and witches,” she said. “If I'm right."

"Does everyone realize they’re part of a story?” Quinn asked, wrinkling her forehead.