by K.N. Lee
"And maybe they are plotting something we really need to worry about."
Phoebe walked out, leaving her daughter alone at the kitchen table with nothing but her thoughts to keep her company. Sometimes that was the worst company to have.
7
The Man Called Grimm is Lost
Grimm stood on the pavement in front of the Arbor Town library looking and smelling the worse for wear. The long coat he wore was stained and frayed at the edges and just stained under his arms. How long he had been wearing it was something of a mystery, at least to him. He scratched absently at a cut which had appeared on his face earlier in the day. Something must have bitten him or he scratched himself with his nails, something. Either way, it burned, so he scratched at it, trying to blend one pain with another.
A woman sitting on the stairs looked up at him speculatively then looked down, the book in her hand no longer keeping her occupied. Underneath the scruff and the dirt, he was pretty cute and he seemed familiar. Looking up again, she said to him,
"You can wear a hole in the pavement or you can go inside. It's not like the library itself is going to move.”
Startled, Grimm looked at her before murmuring,
"No, but where I'm going might."
He moved up the stairs slowly, distractedly, past the woman who watched him go with a look of near recognition on her face. He was someone she had seen before, probably right here at this very library. So what? She shrugged and went back to her book, flipping to a few pages past where she'd been reading. Maybe it would be more interesting if she just skipped that part.
The dark polarized doors reflected a face he barely recognized, powdered with scruff and sallow with weather.
With a wince, he walked into the air conditioned building, the cut on his face sparking with new pain.
An older woman sat behind the counter, her dark hair cascading down her shoulders. She watched him with narrowed eyes as he made his way across the carpeted floor past her desk.
"The couches are not for sleeping on," she said with a sniff.
"Yes, ma'am," he replied without looking at her. His eyes were full of the marble landscape and carpeted floor that made up the world of the library. He knew this place. Sortof. He couldn't have given it a name if asked, but he knew it just the same. Without prompting, his body walked the path to the Men's Room and he opened the door. His nose crinkled at the smell of disinfectant and the hair on his neck stood up in anticipation of what...
It was the same washed tiled place he expected it to be inside his head, but his soul screamed there was something else. Something important. He looked up quickly as the light above his head flickered minutely and his eyes fell on the mirror. Just a simple mirror, placed where most mirrors would be placed, directly behind the sink. Yet he saw his reflection and more than his reflection. Something behind the mirror?
He rushed the glass, running his fingers around the edges. There was nothing behind the mirror. Nothing at all. His instincts were blazing with certainty his mind could not account for. He pressed his hand, palm down, against the glass. His face didn't get any prettier the more he saw it, but he could see his lips moving. Except he wasn't speaking. His mouth began to move, mimicking the certainty he knew and the words came to his mouth, marching out like obedient soldiers.
The glass darkened, looking rather like the doors of the library, but nothing appeared in the dark. Just an emptiness before him.
"Damn it!" he cursed, slamming his hand against the glass which sent a new web of pain up his arm. "Why can't I remember?"
Walking out of the library, Grimm shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his coat. Something, previously close enough for him to kiss, was gone again. It had slipped away when the mirror refused to show anything but flat blackness like matte paint. The woman at the bottom of the stairs was gone. Probably on the bus which took a route before the library. He didn't know. He could care, but she seemed less important than the thing he had lost, again.
This wasn't the first time he'd felt so very certain only to be denied. The first time had been months ago as he stood outside a cemetery within touching distance of a beat up old car. He put his hand on the hood and knew, in that moment, something about that car was important. Something about it was something he knew. If only he could think of what it was. He had walked away from the car after it wouldn't start. Damn thing had probably never worked. His journey had started then. Now he was in Sun City. He put his hand into his breast pocket. The warmth which greeted his fingers was comforting. Inside his breast pocket was a single page of unintelligible writing which occasionally glowed purple.
It was still there. It was still important. It wanted to be in Sun City. Why, he hadn't figured out yet.
Turning, he started walking again, picking a direction by instinct. So far that had been enough to get him around. No use in changing tactics now.
8
The Sisters Evil
Pauline rocked back in her chair, stroking the book in her lap like it was a contented cat, the expression on her face anything but content. Her sister, Patricia, sat across from her, a twin expression of displeasure on her own features. The room they sat in was quiet aside from the wooden creaking sound of Pauline's chair. They had been in the cabin for three days, just the two of them, considering the situation before them.
The book had been little help. Immortals were Immortals, for the most part beyond humans. There was one text said to be able to affect them, but it was out of their reach.
"Well, what are we going to do?"
"If we can separate her from the ring, then she goes back to being a little girl with nothing more than her natural abilities. Natural abilities which are easy enough to combat," Pauline continued to rock. "We can destroy her."
"Are you sure?"
"Would you prefer to live under our dear sister's thumb until she turns the family over to her little brat?"
Patricia snorted in response and Pauline nodded.
"Her mentor is no longer around, so he's not a problem. It's just the girl and our sister."
"A girl with the power of an Immortal and a sister who has not yet recovered her full abilities. I think we should attack Phoebe first. Then we can concentrate on Melina, who is much more a threat."
There was a pause, a moment when they considered, again, the idea of possibly attacking their sister while she was still weak and vulnerable.
"It's a risky venture. A very risky venture. If we attack Phoebe, we run the risk of possibly forcing her abilities back into their full power by threatening her life. However, if we take out Melina, we have the ring and have taken out a threat, then we can destroy Phoebe once and for all."
"Perhaps Christina would be willing to help us? To go against the girl who took away her father?"
"How can she help?"
Their niece had made it clear, incredibly so that she wanted nothing more to do with the girl she shared a room with. They were never seen together and as far as anyone knew Christina no longer slept there. Melina had the room to herself.
Pauline smiled.
"Convince her to steal the ring." Her fingers caressed the book slowly. "If she can take the Ring, then Melina loses her connection to the Immortal, which solves most of our problem for us. Then she will give us the ring and we will have all the power we need to take care of everything."
"It's an interesting idea."
"A brilliant idea," Pauline snapped. "It will fix everything."
"Just like involving Patrick with Cassandra would fix everything?" Patricia asked.
"Patrick was stupid. He didn't do things the right way."
"He almost got us killed, Pauline. We should have just handled it ourselves. It's not like his child is going to be any brighter."
"We don't need her to be brighter, only light fingered." Pauline reached across the table and caressed her sister's face like she had the book. "It will go exactly as we want it to, trust me."
"Exactly why did you find it n
ecessary to simply walk away with the family tome?" Phoebe demanded of her two sisters as the three stood in the living room.
"We just wanted to take some time away from everything and reconnect with our roots. It's awfully hard to do that with all the goings on here, especially lately," Pauline said with a false sugar smile. "After what happened with Mother and Christine and Melina, we just needed to be away from the house. We're sorry we didn't tell you, but honestly, do you really feel like we, at our age, should be checking in all the time? That's a bit childish."
"Pauline."
"Phoebe, really. We're back. The book is back. Everyone's fine. Calm down. You're going to make yourself ill."
"I'm fine."
"Of course you are, but that doesn't mean you should go borrowing stress. There is nothing to be worried about here. It will all be perfectly fine. Now why don't you let me take the book back downstairs where it belongs and we can all go on about our day?"
There was no missing the falseness of her interest in Phoebe's well-being, but there wasn't anything much more she could say. Pauline was right. The book was back. They were back. Despite Melina's misgivings, she was going to simply have to accept what was going on.
"All right," she agreed. The pair left her alone in the living room and Phoebe suppressed a shiver. Someone was walking over her grave; or maybe just digging it.
9
Christina tries to steal the ring
Christina Camp brushed back her blond hair and leveled a square gaze at her Aunt Pauline. She had said there was something important they needed to discuss. So important that Aunt Pauline was going to pick her up from school so that they could talk about it. Christina would have admitted to being a little intrigued if asked, but she wasn't, so she didn't say. Instead she got into the car, dropped her bookbag on the floor, and watched her Aunt as the woman pulled away from the curb. It wasn't typical Overtone Prep policy to allow students to leave early without some prior arrangement, but today they made an exception.
"So what's so important?" Christina finally asked after they had been traveling a few minutes in silence.
"It's about Melina," Pauline said as she easily guided the car into another lane. "We need you to do something that might be a little bit unusual."
"I don't want anything to do with that witch." Christina crossed her arms over her chest, wrinkling her purple Overtone Prep polo shirt, and made a pouty face. "There's nothing that could make me."
Christina had taken to sleeping in the room with her younger cousin, Edwina, in order to avoid being in the same room as Melina. Melina was sleeping on the floor of the Mother's old quarters nearest to Phoebe, so neither of them spent much time in the room they had once shared.
"Simmer down and hear me out." Pauline hadn't lost her smile. With a flick of her wrist, she sent one graying streak of brown hair flying away from her face. Now she paused a moment, choosing her words carefully -. "We want you to take away that ring of hers."
"What?" Christina continued to make that pouty face, but once again she was intrigued. "Why?"
"It's too much power for one little girl to have. We have to get it away from her before it corrupts her any further." Maybe Pauline was laying it on a little thick, but Christina was eating it up. "She only killed your father because of the ring. On her own, she couldn't have done it. Nor would she have threatened your life. You know Melina, she's not that strong. Not like you are."
With that, Pauline smiled at her niece. It was a small smile meant to show both her pleasure and her pain at this situation and she was happy to see Christina start to smile back.
"So if we take that ring away from her, then we don't have to worry about any more incidents like that."
"Why don't you just ask her to give it up?" Christina was beginning to soften, her stance becoming less set and petulant. "She won't say no."
"Ah, we could, but in this case, she would never turn it over. It's already corrupted her too far. She wants to keep it. She wants to use it against the family. After all, we have no proof of your father's guilt except for her and Phoebe's word and who knows how truthful they are? They could have just been removing a rival for power. Patrick was the next in line for the head of the household."
The younger girl nodded. Her father had been next in line and then when he passed, it would have fallen to her, but now that wasn't true anymore. Not with her father dead and Phoebe back. As long as Phoebe claimed Melina as her own, as if that were really true, then the next head of the house would be Melina after Phoebe. The whole thing made Christina retch a little. It should have been her. She was the princess.
They were reaching the turn off where they would head toward the dirt road the house was on. Pauline snatched a glance at Christina, gauging how close she was to accepting this assignment, which was likely a suicide mission. It didn't matter to Pauline if Christina made it or not. That was one more person out of the way.
"So will you do it?"
"Do what?" Christina asked as if she didn't know what she was being asked to do. She knew, she just wanted to hear her Aunt say it one more time. Pauline obliged her.
"Will you steal the ring from Melina and save her from its terrible power? Don't you want your cousin back?"
Being that Christina had never liked Melina, not since she'd been brought into the household as a foundling, it didn't matter to her if she was going to save the other girl's soul. No, Christina wanted that power for herself.
"Once you have it, you can turn it over to me and Patricia and I will dispose of it."
"What about Aunt Phoebe?"
"She hasn't done anything to help, so we can only assume she won't. It's up to us now to save the family from this awful power before it becomes too late."
They bounced some as they turned onto the road for the house, the dirt pocked in places that could suck in tires.
"If I do this, what do I get out of it?"
"Isn't it enough that you're saving your entire family from a scourge?" Pauline asked. She hadn't anticipated that the girl would want compensation so she was thinking on her feet to offer something worthwhile to the teenager.
"Not really. Melina hasn't done anything since my father died. So she doesn't seem like a lot of threat. I could still take her if it came down to that." Maybe that was bravado talking, but Christina chose to believe it. After all, she wasn't about to let herself be bested by a foundling whose only real magic was to make things rot at a touch. All she had to do was stay out of arm's reach and she could defeat Melina easily.
"Well, we can come up with some kind of suitable compensation once you've done the deed."
Pauline hoped the deed would kill her niece, then she would have no need to compensate. It would take the ring from Melina and give them a chance to take it.
"I'll think about it."
"No, tell me you'll do it, Christina." Pauline almost reached across the car and grabbed the girl by her collar wanting to shake her will into that stubborn teen body.
"All right, all right, I'll do it." Christina unfolded her body from the seat as they reached the door yard of the house. "But only because I want to."
Pauline didn't care if she wanted to or not, only that the deed was done. They needed that ring in order to cement their deal with Cassandra. Otherwise, the fire elemental might be coming for them as well. That was a situation Pauline wanted to avoid.
Pauline watched Christina as she crossed the yard to the front door and then slowly got out of the car. She didn't want to follow her in too closely, after all. She didn't want to seem to be pushing the girl any harder than she already had. She had what she wanted, an assurance that things would be done. Shaking out her blue skirts, she made her way up the stairs. Patricia would be waiting for her in the library in hopes of learning that they would get what they wanted. Pauline smiled. They would get what they wanted.
The library danced with dust motes in the light and Patricia sat at the central table with a book before her. She wasn't reading but only so
meone who knew her well would notice. She certainly looked intent on the text; however, she wasn't turning the pages. Pauline walked in and cleared her throat.
"Is it done?" was all Patricia asked.
"It is. We have only to wait on the child."
The younger of the twins looked at her sister with wide eyes and clapped her hands excitedly.
"Perfect," Patricia said. "We will have it soon."
"Provided our agent doesn't fail us."
Though it was her plan, Pauline wondered if entrusting such a thing to a child was the best idea. It had seemed like it would be, using the animosity of Christina against her cousin, but there were too many things that could go wrong. Pauline wanted to hedge her bets a little. She strode to a shelf and after a few moments of searching, she lifted a book from its place. With one hand she dusted the cover of its slight touch of disuse. Then she flipped it open. For a few moments, she held it up in one hand and turned the pages, but then she dropped it on the table causing Patricia to jump where she had gone back to her own text.
"I think this needs a little help."
"What do you mean, Paula?" Patricia got up from her seat and moved to lean over the book Pauline had chosen. She skimmed the page before saying, "A sleeping potion."
"What easier way to make it easy for our thief than to give her a little help? Just a touch of a sleeping draught to force Melina into a comatose sleep for one night."
With a flick of Pauline's wrist, a sheet of paper and a pen appeared out of thin air and Pauline began to take notes. It only took a moment to write it all down.
"I need you to go out and get the clover root."
"Why me? Certainly you can find it."
"I have to get the rest of the potion ready and figure out how we're going to get that little brat to drink it. I'll be busy. Just go and get it."