Reign (An Unfortunate Fairy Tale Book 4) (6 page)

“He’s obsessed with
Leave it to Beaver
lately.” Mina placed the cotton on a larger cut.
Brody inhaled quickly. “Oh, Brody. I’m sorry.”

“It’s no big deal. It’s just cold and it
tickles.”

Mina put the swab over the lid of the
brown bottle and turned it upside down, trying to stay focused on the white
fuzzy cotton ball instead of how near he was. “No, not about the antiseptic. About
what happened in the yard. With the wolf. It’s all my fault.”

Brody gently grabbed her hand with the
swab in it. “Mina, that had nothing to do with you.”

She couldn’t look him in the eye. “No, I
think it does. I think everything weird that has ever happened to you, and so
much more that you don’t remember, all happened because of me.”

“I don’t understand.” Brody dropped her
hand and pulled back to look at her.

It was the moment of truth. “Falling from
a catwalk, waking up on the floor of an abandoned building, fighting a man in a
dark alley.”

Brody visibly paled and his brows
furrowed in anger. “How do you know all of that? You can’t possibly know those
things. I’ve never told anyone—”

She held up her hand, interrupting him.
“No, let me finish.”

Mina’s bottom lip started to tremble. The
seriousness of what she was about to reveal weighed upon her. He may hate her
for it. She lowered her voice and whispered, “For killing Nan.”

The blood rushed from Brody’s face, and
he actually started to keel forward.

Mina instinctively reached up and braced him
as Brody dropped his forehead onto her shoulder in an awkward hug.

“In a car accident?” he mumbled.

“Yes, at the lake house. It was raining
and you were racing her to see your cousin before he left on tour. You took the
turn too fast and flipped your SUV, killing Nan.”

Something warm spread over her shoulder,
and Brody’s body started to shake. Mina wrapped her arms around him and let him
cry.

The Fae were stupid to think that
altering humans’ memories wouldn’t harm them. Here was proof that they were
doing more damage than good. Obviously her friends did retain bits of their
memories, or the memories surfaced when they dreamed. Truth was the only
medicine for the internal hurts they’d been hiding, for goodness knew how long.

A few minutes later, Brody leaned back
and placed his hands around her face, brushing a thumb across her lips. “So how
much more is true? Were we? Are we…?” he trailed off.

Mina nodded her head. “Yes, once. A long
time ago.” She tried to remember what month it was when she’d found out about
being a Grimm. “It’s been over a year.”

He nodded and sighed loudly. “I don’t
know if I’ll ever understand, but just knowing that you know is comforting.”

“Brody what happened—what has been
happening—it may continue to happen to you, to me, to others.” She
swallowed nervously.

He stiffened and sat up on the counter
and pulled away from her. “No. Nobody should have to live not knowing if what
they experience is real or not. I know I can’t.”

“Then you have to stay away from me. Stay
as far from me as you possibly can, and maybe you won’t be sucked into my
curse.”

Brody’s eyes flashed and he looked at her
possessively. “Never, now that I know we really had something. I’m going to
continue to pursue that. I won’t let anything come between us.”

Mina’s heart soared before it came
crashing down to earth, shattering in a million pieces. “Can you fight your
shadow? Something that you can’t see or understand? What I’m in the middle
of—this fight—is something that’s been going on for hundreds of
years. People get hurt, become pawns, and get tossed aside. Especially those
closest to a Grimm.”

“Grimm? You mean like the two brothers?”

Mina nodded her head. “The very same. They
were my ancestors.”

“I seem to remember you studying a bunch
of books by the Grimm Brothers…at a library…right?” He looked at her
expectantly.

Mina smiled. “Yes.”

“Go on…” he waited.

Mina’s eyes drifted to his chest and then
to his injured arm that was turning an ugly purple. “Not now. First we need to
worry about this.” She stepped away from him, which was harder to do than she
thought. She opened the bathroom door and pointed with her head for him to precede
her.

Brody slid from the countertop, picked up
his bloody and ruined shirt, and walked into the hall. Mina brushed all of the
cotton balls into the garbage and screwed the lid back on the disinfectant
before walking him to their kitchen.

He probably could have found the kitchen
without her based on the horrid smells wafting down the hallway. Mina found Nix
wearing her mother’s flowered apron as he hummed and stirred a cast iron pot full
of boiling green liquid.

The kitchen was an epic disaster. It
looked like Nix had raided the cabinets and left all the cupboard doors open.
He was currently going through the spice cabinet, taking the lid off every
available jar of natural herbs to smell them. Most he discarded quickly, making
a face and shoving them to the right. He did set two or three in a different
group. But then he reached farther back, and slid out a few glass jars sealed
with wax.

Mina didn’t recognize the unlabeled jars
as belonging to her family. Well, not her immediate family. They could very
well have been put there by her father—or even her grandfather.

Nix seemed pleased with what he’d found
and added them to the boiling concoction. The way he mumbled to himself, tossing
herbs in, made him look very much like he was boiling and toiling up some
trouble. The brown terra cotta pot that sat in the corner by the kitchen table
had been stripped of all of its leaves. She had no idea what the plant was—it
had already been in the house when they moved in—but obviously Nix knew.

“Take a seat. The doctor will be ready in
a moment,” Nix said, chuckling.

Brody sat on a chair facing Nix, who
started straining the foul smelling broth into a teapot. He kept the spices,
leaves, and who knew what else and threw them into another pot, crushing the
remains with a potato masher until it took on a pulpy texture. It looked
horrible and smelled worse. But Nix scooped the paste into a small bowl and
stood over Brody.

“Okay, I’m ready,” Nix grinned happily.
He was clearly in his element.

“Not on your life,” Brody said, holding
his hand over his nose. “That stuff can’t possibly help.”

“Arm,” Nix demanded, eyeing the wound
that was starting to ooze again.

“You don’t even know how to work a
toaster. I’m not letting Betty Crocker go all Florence Nightingale on me.”

“Who?” Nix asked and looked to Mina.

“Exactly!” Brody pointed toward Nix. “You
agree with me right, Mina?”

Mina had to cover her mouth as the
laughter just spilled out. Amid all the stress, these two could still make her laugh.
When her giggles stopped, she finally choked out, “No, he knows what he’s doing,
Brody…trust me.”

Brody looked at her like she’d grown
horns. “No.”

“Why not?” Mina frowned.

“Not until I know for sure that you’ll go
with me to that thing.”

“Are you really going to deny being
treated until you have an answer? I thought I already said yes.”

“Well, technically you did, but I want to
make sure you hadn’t changed your mind.” Brody raised one eyebrow at her and
waited.

Nix watched the exchange, holding a long
wooden spoon filled with the green paste up in the air. Any minute now, he
would start tapping his foot.

“This has nothing to do with the date.
You’re just trying to delay the inevitable. Just let him treat your arm before
you get rabies and die, you big baby.”

“Okay,” Brody said sheepishly. He held
out his arm.

Nix looked relieved and started to smear
the goo up and down, covering the large bite marks. Mina didn’t want to draw
any more unnecessary attention to it, but those wounds were made by something bigger
than any dog she’d ever seen. Way bigger.

“It feels weird.” Brody kept flexing his
fingers. “It’s getting hot.”

“That means it’s working.” Nix grinned
and went to pick up the glass jar he had found earlier. “At home in my cave, I
used to keep a jar of this stuff. I never expected to find it here in your
world.”

Mina’s eyes went wide, and Brody’s head
snapped to look at Nix.

“Cave? World? What in—”

“Heaven’s name is going on in here!” her
mother screeched as she came to a halt in her kitchen. Her face flushed red as
she surveyed the mess in the kitchen, the half-naked boy sitting at the table
with her daughter, and the other boy wearing her apron.

Charlie peeked around his mother and took
one look at Nix in his apron and ran to him. Nix bent down and scooped the boy
into his arms in a big hug. Charlie began to pull on Nix’s red hair and touch
his face as if he couldn’t believe the difference. It took a second for Mina to
realize that this was the first time her brother had seen Nix’s new human body.
He’d seen Nix on the Fae plane with green hair and skin. Charlie had been the
one to insist that she drag him into their world. She hadn’t been sure Charlie
would remember.

“Hey, Li’l man.” Nix chuckled, placing Charlie’s
feet back on the floor.

Charlie smiled and yanked on Nix’s arm,
pulling him out of the kitchen and pointing toward his room.

“What are you doing, Charlie?” her mom
asked, evidently confused at her son’s reception to a complete stranger.

“It’s okay. They’ll be fine,” Mina spoke
up. She jumped up and moved as far as she could across the room from Brody and
began to clean up. “I’ll have this cleaned in no time, Mom.”

“That doesn’t explain what you’re doing and
why he’s”—she pointed to Brody’s chest but wouldn’t look at him—“not
wearing a shirt. And what is that awful smell?” Brody was smart enough to move
to the restroom to try and clean up.

“Mom,” Mina rushed over to her and pulled
her closer to the sink. “Let me explain. Look at his—”

“Mina, I don’t know that I want to hear
an explanation.”

“He was bitten by a wolf.”

“That’s ridiculous. There are no wolves
around here.”

“No, I think it was a different kind of
wolf. You know. Of the Fae variety. Although I’m not certain.”

Her mom stopped talking and froze. Mina
gave her credit for not immediately breaking down into hysterics. She looked
over at Brody’s empty chair and asked, “Is he going to be okay?”

“I think so. Nix made something, and it
seems to be making it better.” She gestured to the messy kitchen.

“Nix?”

“The boy with red hair, the one that’s with
Charlie.” Her mother walked over and gingerly picked up each bottle reading the
label. She looked into the cauldron and over to the teapot. “This smells
familiar, this smells…Fae. Mina, what do you know about this boy?”

For starters, Mina didn’t know her mother
could tell just by smell what things were Fae and what weren’t. Was that even
possible?

“Charlie saved Nix’s life when Nix was
about to die on the Fae plane.”

“Charlie was on the Fae plane? When? What
happened?”

“I think it’s best if you ask your Fae
godmother Terry for those answers. Right now, I need you to trust me. We are
doing what we can for Brody.”

Brody stuck his head in the kitchen and
held out his arm. “You won’t believe this.” He pulled up one end of the dry
paste to reveal a bright pink patch of skin. There wasn’t a single wound left.
“That putrid smelling garbage works.”

Chapter 8

Thankfully, Mina’s mom understood and
helped her clean up the kitchen. Brody had hundreds of questions. Her mom and
Nix were able to fill him in on the gist of it. It was nice to have someone
else besides her to explain. When three different people agreed on the story,
it was at least slightly easier to make him believe he wasn’t crazy.

Convincing him the Fae really existed was
tough. He got quiet a few times and had to get up and walk around the kitchen.
Once, he even left the house and stood in the rain before he came back in to
hear more of the impossible. The inner turmoil was evident. His mind struggled
to come to grips with the reality of what happened versus the false memories
implanted by the Story.

They were all careful to continue calling
the Fae power Story. Trying to explain Jared’s death as he became one with
Teague again could be saved for a later date. A few times, her mom became
visibly shaken with the retelling of certain events—especially when
something didn’t gel with her own memories. She toyed anxiously with the charm
bracelet on her wrist until her face relaxed and she calmed down enough to
continue on with the story. Then, her breathing slowed, and she would perk up.

Mina knew it was the charms that were
helping her mother. Each renewed memory must send her mother into a nervous
fit, but then the charm would push the memory farther back into her
subconscious.