The Grimm Chronicles, Vol. 4

by Isabella Fontaine

  I crawled beside her and held her. Her head collapsed on my shoulder.

  “He’s gone forever,” she sobbed. The words came as a relief. Finally, finally, she’d said those words.

  I squeezed her tight. “He was a great guy. He … I …” Nothing else came out. I didn’t know what to say. Crap, what was the point of reading all those books if they wouldn’t help me find words when I needed them?

  Alice mumbled something into my shoulder. My Milwaukee Brewers t-shirt was already soaked with her tears.

  “What?” I asked.

  She pulled away, clutching my arm so tight that she pinched the skin. “Grayle,” she hissed between clenched teeth. “I’m going to kill him.”

  “Wait,” I said before she could pull away. I grabbed her clammy hand and held it. Little white crescents appeared on my forearm where her nails had dug into the skin.

  “I’m going to kill him!” she screamed, getting up. I put every ounce of energy into my butt, diving forward and grabbing her by the ankle before she could escape. I clutched as hard as I could.

  “He said he would kill your family,” I said frantically. “Alice, if you kill him, he’ll kill your parents! He might even kill me!”

  “He’s not going to get away with this!” she yelled. “I’m going to rip his limbs off and then when they grow back, I’m going to rip them off again!” She turned and looked down at me. She had a horrible look in her eyes, like her pupils were made of oil. “He won’t die if I don’t use the magic pen. I’ll just keep hurting him until I feel better!”

  “That won’t help …”

  She kicked out of my grip. I thought she might leave, but instead, she ran over to the far wall, ripping down all of the posters. She ran to her nightstand, reaching over and grabbing the lamp, ripping its cord out of the socket. She threw it across the room, screaming. Then she went for her bookcase, grabbing books and throwing them as hard as she could into the hallway. When one entire shelf was empty, she slid the shelf out and smashed it against the door.

  The bookshelf wobbled.

  “Alice …”

  She turned back, her eyes darting from me to the bookshelf.

  It began to tip.

  Chapter 5: Briar

  I snuck in as usual through the window in the guest room on the second floor. This was my secret: the guest room was opposite Alice’s room, away from her parents’ room on the far end of the hall, with a brand-new efficiency window left unlocked. Old windows are noisy contraptions, not good for sneaking around, you see. But these new windows … hoo boy, they slide up quiet as can be.

  Of course, there was hardly any point in keeping quiet. Alice was doing enough screaming to alert the entire suburb of the danger contained within the Goodenough house. I’d heard her blocks away and skee-daddled through the forest to her house, up the exterior and through the window. With blinding speed, I hopped over the guest bed, into the hall, entering Alice’s room en media res.

  Alice was standing over Chase, clutching the bookshelf.

  “Oh dear!” I exclaimed. Most of the books had fallen from the shelves, piling up on Chase. The poor fellow was buried in Twain, Steinbeck, Cisneros and Kingsolver. He was tossing them aside as quickly as he could, trying scootch out from under the shadow of the bookcase.

  “Hurry, Briar!” Alice pleaded. I could see already that her legs were giving out under the weight of the massive case. There was little time! With both paws I grabbed the ends of the case. My big left foot slipped on a copy of Huckleberry Finn (a personal favorite) and I nearly tumbled back right into Alice.

  “I can’t hold on much longer,” Alice said. It was clear by the worried look on her face that she was panicking, very uncharacteristic of her. “Briar, it’s going to fall on him!”

  “Push,” I ordered. “Push as hard as you can!”

  Together, we pushed on the heavy bookcase. I slid my paws lower, kicking aside more books so my feet wouldn’t slip again. Slowly, the bookshelf righted itself.

  Alice’s legs buckled. She collapsed beside Chase, pushing aside a handful of old Babysitters Club books and grabbing his hand so tightly that I feared she might break his fingers. “I almost hurt you.”

  He chuckled. “Well, the books did kind of hurt when they landed on me and all.”

  “Chase … I lost my temper.” The poor girl’s eyes were welling up with tears again. Chase was quick to react, reaching over and pulling her close. I have to admit, it was a strange scene, seeing the two lying there covered by books.

  “This,” I said quietly, “is exactly the kind of moment where Seth would have something funny to say.”

  Alice rested the back of her head on the carpet. “He’s gone. He’s never coming back.” Chase shifted closer, resting his head on her shoulder. His normally perfect hair was disheveled; Alice reached over, smoothing it out. Her fingers curled around a couple locks, then quickly pulled away. “I’m going to kill Sam Grayle, Briar. There has to be a way to do it.”

  I couldn’t stop myself from glancing nervously out the window. What if that pesky dwarf was watching? Or—worse—listening? “Alice,” I said, “such a thing would be quite challenging. Perhaps we should wait until we have a plan.” I tapped my foot on the ground, thinking. How best to broach the subject of revenge? There was no easy way. Revenge always feels right in the heat of the moment. And right then Alice was angry enough to feel that revenge would bring some relief, some cooling salve to the intense fire burning deep within her soul.

  But it was clergyman Douglas Horton who once said, “While seeking revenge, dig two graves—one for yourself.” And he was right. And Alice was not the first hero to contemplate revenge. And I was not interested in seeing her fall down that rabbit hole.

  “What we need is some kind of safe house for Chase and Mom and Dad,” Alice said. “Or a better understanding of how to remove the dwarf’s safeguards.”

  “We could break windows at the junkyard.”

  Alice and I looked at Chase. “Surely you’ve gone insane,” I offered.

  The boy willingly accepted his loved one’s efforts to help him onto the bed. He rubbed a red cut on his arm—a nasty paper cut, the culprit being Alice’s copy of The DaVinci Code. Oh, nothing good has ever come of that infernal book.

  “We used to go there to blow off steam after a loss,” Chase explained. “It helped. The sound of breaking glass really felt good, especially after getting to the state championships only to lose it in the ninth inning because the other team’s batter hit a bloop single into right field.”

  “Hmmm.” I declined input—it was clear from his tone that the boy was not quite over the event in question.

  “No,” Alice said. “That’s against the law. I’m not breaking the law. I’m not going to harm anyone else just because I’m so angry.” She walked over to her desk, grabbing the magic pen. Her fingers curled around it; she glared at it a moment, and there was something in her eyes I’d not yet seen before. But then, just as quickly, it was gone. “We’re going to go hunting.”

  “Hunting?” Chase asked.

  Alice nodded, eyes narrowed in intense concentration. Her dark hair hung in strands over her face, a pesky annoyance she rarely tolerated. “Hunting.”

  A quiet “gulp” escaped from my mouth. To borrow one of Alice’s favorite phrases, my stomach lurched.

  And so it happened that after a long—and much-needed—break, we were back in the Corrupted game. Only instead of following the clues in Alice’s dreams, we were essentially starting from square one. Hunting. Playing hide-and-seek. Baiting a hook, throwing it into the water, and waiting for the bobber to dip below the surface of the water.

  Any metaphor would generally do.

  Only hunting is an entirely different beast (pardon the pun). Few heroes ever thought it necessary to go out in search of more Corrupted. Eugene Washington was one of them. So was Abigail Bauer, from what few texts remain of her exploits. But really, the Corrupted haunting the heroes’ dreams were ti
me-consuming enough. There was hardly any good reason to engage in additional life-threatening situations.

  It should be quite obvious now that each hero’s abilities are unique. They see the tracks of the Corrupted to varying degrees. Alice can see most of the tracks, but occasionally a Corrupted can hide the tracks in a clever way. Remember those blasted shape-shifting twins? They left no tracks. Nor did they glow. Their shape-shifting abilities let them hide such “tells.”

  And so when you go out hunting, you must of course realize this, and you must also realize that you can’t possibly know where those tracks—if you find any at all—might lead. And who’s to say what you may find if you do find tracks? The chances of it being a dog—a favorite of the Brothers Grimm, peppered throughout their stories—are the same as the chances of it being a mutated wolf or nasty, pox-ridden elf or man-eating griffon!

  I debated the merits of this activity, not sure it was worth the danger. But it was obvious that Alice needed an outlet for this anger she was feeling, and quite frankly I was terrified her lust for revenge would blind her to the fact that Sam Grayle had sufficiently protected himself. What if I convinced her not to hunt, and she decided instead to barge into the dwarf’s mansion and whap him with her sword? No, best not to think about Grayle at all, at least while her mind was clouded and her emotions running high. Grayle was far too clever to deal with unless one’s head was clear.

  “… And I should also stress,” I added while we were in the car, “that revenge is not a dish best served cold, as the tired cliché goes. Revenge heals no wounds.”

  “We get it,” Alice and Chase said at the same time.

  “Excuse me. I just thought perhaps it would be a good reminder, should one of us decide to deviate from the intended course and make a beeline for Grayle Incorporated.” Alice turned in her seat. I nodded my head to her. “I’m talking about you, of course.”

  She took a deep breath but said nothing. She knew I was right.

  Chase pulled onto the next road, which was lined with twisted ash trees and the occasional old farmhouse. We were west of Milwaukee where the sprawling suburbs gave way to rolling hills and ankle-high corn stalks. Chase’s vehicle had been outfitted with controls on the steering wheel that let him drive without using his feet. It was an incredible contraption, but Chase had unfortunately forgotten his best driving habits and retained only his worst. Namely, he seemed to overly enjoy jerking the steering wheel, making sharp turns that were neither necessary nor safe.

  The only good news was the car smelled pleasantly like French fries.

  “What exactly are we looking for?” Chase asked, flipping the windshield visor down. He was also wearing big black aviator sunglasses. I was a bit jealous of them.

  “Alice is keeping a keen eye out for a Corrupted trail,” I answered. “I am trying to hold my lunch down while you drive like a bat out of you-know-where.”

  “But why out here?” Chase asked, frustrated. I feared he also was harboring more than a little anger over Seth’s death. For too long, he’d been putting on the brave face, trying to comfort Alice as best he could. For him, that meant hiding his own feelings whenever he could. He’d lost his temper from time to time, and sometimes when the two of us were consulting the latest research—yes, I was still charting mysterious goings-on—he could occasionally choke up and need to excuse himself. I do believe that he’d convinced himself the best way to help Alice was to be strong.

  Even at Seth’s memorial service, Chase had been stoic despite Alice’s absence, being “strong” while everyone around him was in tears.

  What, you thought I was absent this whole time? Pish-posh! I’d been at Seth’s funeral, all right. Hiding in the back and then slipping out when it got to be too much.

  “I’ve been using the Bing to keep an eye out for potential Corrupted. You know—strange occurrences and all. Quite a few missing livestock have been reported recently in this area.”

  “No more Google?” Chase asked with a smile.

  My ears pulled back. “The Google redesigned my email box without my say-so, warranting scorn. Turn left here.”

  Chase slowed the car at the next intersection and turned left, taking us north past a massive barn filled with black-and-white cows and into a hilly, secluded forest area. Oh, how I love Wisconsin’s countryside. Land carved out by glaciers is the most interesting kind of land.

  “There,” Alice said, pointing up ahead to a gravel road that intersected ours. Chase slowed, making an impossibly tight turn. “Park up there,” Alice instructed, pointing to a small way station at the edge of the forest. Chase pulled the car over next to an empty picnic area, and before either of us could protest, Alice was already outside.

  “Someone’s anxious,” he murmured. “Briar … could you give me a paw?”

  I snickered beside myself, getting out of the car and ensuring we were quite alone before opening the trunk and pulling out Chase’s wheelchair. I helped him into it, shutting his door and wheeling him around to the little path that led into the forest just ahead. The path’s small wooden sign announced that this was an Ice Age trail.

  “An excellent opportunity to grow our brains,” I commented. “Did you know that approximately ten percent of the world is covered by glaciers?”

  “I do now,” Chase said absently. He was watching Alice hop from foot to foot on the gravel path, staring anxiously into the forest. She was wearing her hero’s gear: black pants and a violet t-shirt. Despite my warnings to the contrary, she seemed determined to not camouflage herself at all. Why not just a simple brown shirt, to blend in a bit? Why not tape a few leaves to your shirt? Surely when hunting, surprise is a great weapon.

  “Surely you know by now that I’m not taping anything to my shirt,” had been her response.

  Sigh.

  Behind us, tall metallic sprinklers watered a thirsty corn crop, which was surrounded by an old barbed-wire fence. The last crop before the forest.

  “This forest is protected,” I told them. “And judging by the sign, people are encouraged to stay on the path.”

  “So?” Chase asked.

  “Sooooo … it would be easy for a Corrupted to hide away by simply deviating from the path. But again, I can’t be sure exactly what is hiding away. Alice, what do you see?”

  “A trail,” she answered numbly. The animation usually evident on the poor girl’s face was gone. She was more like a statue with a single expression: unbridled anger. It frightened me. I’d seen that look before … on Juliette.

  “Well, should we—Alice, wait!” We both shouted the last part, watching helplessly as Alice followed the path into the forest, rounding a bend and disappearing behind a cluster of thick maple trunks.

  Chase sighed a defeated sigh. For a moment, I thought the poor boy was going to need a moment to collect himself. But then he took a big breath and straightened his back. “Let’s go.”

  “Would you like to try and catch up to her?” I offered.

  He just shook his head. “Maybe it’s better to just let her do her thing, you know? It’s not like we can be of much help. Well, it’s not like I can.”

  “Oh, nonsense,” I said, pushing him along the trail. We entered the forest; the air cooled as we made our way under the shade of the canopy. “What about our exploits in the catacombs? We were the bomb, to borrow a popular catchphrase from the late 90’s.”

  “Yeah. I just feel like there’s something else I could be doing to help her, you know? I … it’s like … even right after the car accident, I didn’t feel like this.”

  “You didn’t feel angry?”

  “Of course I felt angry. I was totally angry. I threw stuff in the hospital room. But then I just accepted it.”

  “Oh really?” I asked innocently, wheeling him along the path. “You didn’t try to cut a deal with a magic fish?”

  The backs of his ears turned red. “OK, yeah. I kinda forgot about that part.”

  “And then afterward, when you finally had to accept
what happened, did you not struggle with it? Because I seem to recall Seth and I stopping by a couple nights to play Risk.”

  “Your point?”

  “My point is that everyone mourns differently,” I said. “Everyone. Alice is mourning Seth on her own terms, not ours.”

  “Right. So what you’re saying is I need to give this time.”

  “What I’m saying is that dealing with the death of a loved one—friend or family—is never easy. And yes, it takes time. Anger is a part of the process. But at least she’s feeling something. At least she’s past the denial. The healing process will be a long road, I fear. But if she can find away to move past the anger, things will get better.”

  We moved in silence, rounding the bend where the path followed a gradual incline. Large boulders were smattered between the trees, some covered in a dark green moss, others congregating with a handful of brethren of various sizes. Boulders no doubt left behind by the last glacier.

  Chase chuckled. “Remember how Seth would always name his armies when we played Risk?”

  I laughed at the memory. “Ah, such glorious names. The Megadeths. The Winged Hornets. The Red Hornets. I still can’t fathom why he loved hornets so much.”

  “They were his favorite bug with a stinger. He liked bumblebees, too. Hated honeybees even though he loved honey. But he hated syrup … I never understood that. How can you not like maple syrup?”

  “Oh, indeed! I remember my creator Eugene and I once learned to bore holes into maple trees to extract their sap during the spring thaw. It was invaluable on one long journey as we hunted down a young prince who had the curious ability to multiply.”

  “What do you mean by multiply?” Chase asked, his interest piqued.

  “I mean he multiplied. It was quite an excruciating process as killing his duplicates only slowed us down. We followed him north, right here into Wisconsin where the winter was bitter and cold, forcing us to use up all our foodstuffs. We then tapped a few maple trees to extract the sap when the spring rolled around.”