The Grimm Chronicles, Vol. 1

by Isabella Fontaine

  Think like Briar, the voice inside my head told me. Briar could talk his way into the server room. He could trick his way in there, too, if only he wasn’t a giant talking rabbit.

  Speaking of which …

  “Remember: we need to go in through the parking structure,” I told Seth.

  “Why is that again?”

  We stepped out onto the sidewalk. Even at night it was still warm out, and it smelled like rain might be coming in. “Because I need to make sure our escape route is safe.”

  Next door, dozens of people were taking advantage of an Italian restaurant’s outdoor seating area. The circular wooden tables ran right up against the sidewalk, and there more than a few people ignoring their dining company in favor of their smartphones.

  Here it was: the test.

  “Go slow,” I told Seth. I steeled myself, then turned to the dining patrons. Some of them looked up, glancing curiously at the both of us and examining our outfits. A couple of the younger-looking guys gave my dress a much-appreciated once-over. I smiled.

  No one stared. No one lifted their smartphones and aimed the cameras at me or at Seth.

  “We’re officially in ghost mode,” I murmured. Although if there was one moment when I actually wanted my picture taken, it was now. The old earrings, new dress, fierce shoes, and a dark wine-colored lip stain combined into something far more glamorous than my usual attire. Even with the dated Goodwill glasses and bottle-blonde hair, I still thought I pulled off the whole look pretty well.

  “Wonderful,” Seth said. “Hooray for our team.”

  We walked across the street. I could see Grayle Tower a block ahead, looming over Milwaukee like a cavity-stricken incisor. Through the windows on the top floor, I could see lights on. Were the dwarfs in there, or would they be downstairs, greeting donors and pretending they weren’t Corrupted?

  We passed another bar. I looked inside, sure that there would be a few trendy folks with their cell phones out. A few people who’d no doubt downloaded that stupid Castle Cats game. If they had, none of them recognized me. Two young men stopped playing darts to glance at me. Through the windows on the other side of the entrance, a table full of young college-aged girls with identical short-banged haircuts examined me with a bored look while they sipped their clear drinks.

  The disguise was working. We were going to go inside Grayle Tower totally undercover. Just the fact that we’d outsmarted the dwarfs so far made me feel excited. All three of them thought they were so freaking clever. But I had something they didn’t have:

  A rabbit.

  “Look at them,” Seth said when we reached the next corner. He nodded to his left, across the street. There were a dozen or so young people standing outside of Zed’s Burgers, chatting and playing on their smartphones. Eight of them were eating Carameltastic candy bars. “Zombies, man. Just eating whatever the little messages inside their phones tells them to eat. It’s pathetic, dude.”

  I nudged him, nodding to the Carameltastic candy bar he was in the process of unwrapping. He looked at it, did a double-take, and threw it in the trash can beside the traffic light.

  “Gross! I must have bought it at the drug store when I bought our hair dye. Holy crap, I don’t even remember buying it. It’s like I was totally brainwashed.”

  I put a hand on his back, urging him across the street. “After tonight, no one’s going to ever have that problem again.”

  He shook his head, looking up at Grayle Tower. “This place is huge. I feel like I’m going to pee my pants.”

  “Just breathe,” I said.

  We walked to the ramp leading to the underground parking structure. Just as Briar had predicted, there were two middle-aged men wearing tuxes standing by the entrance. A white sign beside them read “Valet Parking.”

  “Wait,” Seth said, grabbing my arm. His hand was sweaty and hot. “OK. I’ve been thinking about this. Even if I do manage to delete the nasty let’s-control-the-world code, they could just put it back in again at some point.”

  I shook my head. “You let me deal with that.”

  “Oh. OK. Just like that, huh?”

  I smiled. “Just like that.”

  “OK, wait again,” he said, pulling me again before I could take a step. “What if I told you I’m totally scared witless right now?”

  I thought about it for a moment. “I’d say that’s good. You should be scared in a moment like this. I’m scared, too. But we need to conquer that for the time being because what’s happening inside this building is … wrong.”

  We walked up to the valets, who gave us a suspicious look. “We’re ah … here,” Seth said, reaching into his pocket and flashing the tickets. “So we’re just, like, I mean we need something …”

  “I forgot something in my car,” I told the valet, flashing a smile. “It’s a lady thing.”

  The valet glanced at the tickets in Seth’s shaky hand, then gave a little nod. We walked into the dark garage, making our way farther and farther down the ramp, stopping beside a flashy Cadillac as another valet parked a red Corvette and got out, making his way upstairs. He gave us a quick look but didn’t seem concerned.

  “Looks like a lot of people are already here,” I said quietly. “I think we’re in good shape.”

  “Dudette, whatever. I bet those valets are calling the police right now.”

  I grabbed Seth’s arm, pulling him farther down the ramp. “We haven’t even broken any laws yet! We’re here to enjoy the fundraiser gala. We have real tickets. What are they going to do … kick us out of a fundraiser? We’ll throw a stink.”

  “Yeah … I guess you’re right.” Seth snorted. “Man, it’s just like these Grayle guys to throw a benefit. I bet the reporters here are gonna write it up all nice and pretty in the paper tomorrow. And then the same guys brainwashing everyone across the country look like just the nicest sons of guns. Look! They donated a thousand dollars to the museum. Big deal. I donated five bucks once and that’s waaaaaaay more money if you think about it. Because I’m poor.”

  “When did you donate five dollars?” I asked.

  “Pish-posh. Don’t sound so surprised. I like dinosaurs. I like the museum. I think it’s cool. So I go there sometimes. Used to go sometimes with Trish, before she got all sick of it. ‘Ugh! There’s a bug on the wall.’ No, Trish, it’s plastic. This is the rainforest exhibit. Rainforests are full of strange, frightening bugs, Trish.”

  I laughed. “Sounds like Trish all right.”

  We stopped at the strange door at the bottom of the ramp. I tried the handle.

  Locked. Just as Briar had suspected.

  “OK, plan’s over,” Seth said, throwing his hands up in the air. “Let’s go home and call in the Army or something.”

  “Just hold on,” I said, pulling my fountain pen from my purse. “Um, stand behind me and keep an eye out.”

  “Sure, sure.” He turned. “Later, when the police ask, I can honestly say I didn’t see Alice Goodenough picking a lock.”

  I used the pen to draw a cut right through the padlock, then pulled it apart and tossed it on the ground. Another trick Briar taught me. I opened the door and gave a little nod, keeping it open long enough for Invisible Briar to slip through. He was in full stealth mode, invisible even to me so that he didn’t accidentally reveal himself to anyone else.

  I felt a gentle rush of air, then a soft tap of his padded foot on the concrete.

  Our signal.

  Yeah, we’re pretty cool.

  “Did you hear something?” Seth asked.

  “Just the wind,” I answered, shutting the door again. “Come on. We have a gala to attend.”

  We made our way back up the ramp, to the top floor where a little sandwichboard sign pointed us in the direction of the double doors that led inside the building. We walked inside and made our way down a small hallway lined with potted dark green ferns. It smelled like expensive perfume.

  “Getting nervous now,” Seth said. “Getting nervous …”

&nbs
p; “Just breathe,” I said. I followed my own advice, pressing my fingers on the frosted glass door with the big “G” of the Grayle Incorporated logo printed on it. I pushed on the door.

  Nothing happened.

  “You have to pull,” Seth said.

  “Right.” I grabbed the metal handle and pulled the door open. Inside the main lobby, a man in a tux led us down the hall, past four elevators with brass-colored doors, past the bathrooms where a woman wearing a low-cut red dress was bending over, adjusting her high heel. Seth snuck a peek at her cleavage and I gave him a gentle elbow to the ribs.

  We walked through another pair of frosted glass doors at the end of the hall.

  … Into one of the grandest atriums I’ve ever seen. The room was large, filled with circular high tables holding a menagerie of boozy-looking drinks. A small bar sat in the far corner with two male bartenders in crisp white shirts and black vests were taking orders and shaking their metal mixer thingies. On the opposite wall was a grand piano. A man was sitting at it, very gently playing a soothing classical tune.

  The windows on the far end of the atrium were two stories tall, separated by marble pillars that I assumed were mainly for look. Outside, you could see the courtyard and the fountain.

  The room was full of people. They were all dressed in fancy suits and long evening gowns. A lot of them looked middle-aged and the rest looked even older.

  “Um, we’re the youngest people here,” Seth pointed out.

  “Just walk and pretend to mingle,” I said. “We need to find the schedule.”

  “Why?”

  “So we know when to slip away. Come on.” I led him through the sea of people, to the tall poster stands that had been placed strategically around the room. Each poster had a picture of one of the museum’s exhibits. We stopped and looked at all of them, pretending we were interested but in reality we really were interested. I’d forgotten half the exhibits and seeing pictures of them reignited a lot of good memories.

  “Gawd, how many times did we take a school field trip to the museum?” I asked with a laugh.

  “Every single year,” Seth answered. He pointed to the picture of the saber-toothed tiger skeleton. “That was always your favorite. You’d make me stay in the Ice Age exhibit with you so you could draw the tiger. It was so annoying. We’d get separated from our group and then when the teachers found us, they’d always give us a demerit. You were kind of a jerk.”

  “I didn’t force you to stay with me,” I said defensively.

  “You were my partner!” he exclaimed. “If I lost you the teachers would have gone crazy on me! We’re talking like, total meltdown. ‘How could you lose your partner? You’re supposed to keep an eye on your partner!’ They would have cut off my thumbs or something.”

  “Well, we came out of it all right.”

  “Yeah, hooray for friendship,” he muttered.

  We walked to the other side of the atrium, to the large windows overlooking the courtyard. A handful of middle-aged men and women were standing near the fountain, sipping glasses of dark red wine.

  “Man oh man, I’m so terrified,” Seth said. “I mean, like, even my butt is sweating right now. I wish you would have just let me shower at home this morning.”

  “No. The Grayles know what you look like. They might know who you are. We can’t take any risks.”

  “They’re going to see through this disguise,” Seth said. “I stand out like a sore thumb. Heck my head sort of looks like a sore thumb, for crying out loud.”

  “Oh, stop it.” I giggled. “We’re bickering just like we used to do in middle school.”

  Seth sighed, smiling. “Yeah. Those were such simple times, weren’t they? Man, you know what the craziest thing is? This,” he waved his hand around the atrium, “isn’t even as scary as starting senior year. Everything is going to change this year. I can just feel it. Do you get scared about it?”

  “Yeah.” I shrugged. “I just haven’t really had time to think about it too much yet.” Too much time spent trying to figure out this new aspect of my life. I wondered what it might be like to tell Seth … maybe just give him a few hints and let him guess. I wanted someone to talk to. Someone who wasn’t a giant talking rabbit.

  “You’re right: I shouldn’t be thinking about it yet either,” Seth said. He shook his head vigorously. “I need to focus on the task at hand: vandalizing a multi-million-dollar company’s property.”

  “Yes,” I said. “That’s the spirit!”

  “OK.” Seth’s foot was tapping on the tiled floor. “Let’s do this. Before I lose my nerve.”

  “Just wait a moment,” I said. “We need our distraction.”

  I turned back to the party. More people had streamed in, crowding the bar area. The pianist changed tempo, offering something upbeat and deep. The chandeliers hanging above had circular rows of lights shaped like candle flames, and as someone standing near the bar tapped on his glass, the lights dimmed.

  Everyone turned to look.

  “Now,” I said. “Come on!”

  We slipped between a handful of nicely dressed old fogies, keeping to the other side of the room.

  “Can everyone see me all right now?” asked a familiar voice. The crowd laughed politely.

  I turned. There, standing on a chair beside the piano, was Sam Grayle. Gawd, he could dress so stylish. His gray suit was so sleek that it seemed to glisten, tailored perfectly at his wrists, his shoulder pads square but not too broad.

  Maybe I could squirt some ketchup on him if he got in our way. At least we’d cost him one big dry cleaning bill.

  “I just want to thank you all for coming,” Sam Grayle said in a loud, booming voice. He smiled. “This fundraiser meant a lot to the former owners of this building, and it means a lot to us, too. The history of the natural world is a beautiful, amazing thing, one that Grayle Incorporated wants to continue supporting every single year. Which is why we’ve decided to match the donations made tonight.”

  A hearty round of applause.

  “Yeah, soak it up,” I murmured, pushing Seth to the doors. “And enjoy it while it lasts.”

  We made our way back into the hall, hurrying to the elevators. I pushed the “up” button. Two doors opened. We hurried to the nearest one, slipping inside. Seth pushed the button for the thirteenth floor.

  Soft elevator music played through a speaker in the ceiling. I felt our weight sink into our feet.

  “Are you feeling OK?” Seth asked with one narrowed eye. “You look tired.”

  “This week has taken a lot out of me,” I said.

  “We could reschedule this. Maybe think it over for a few more days …”

  I glared at him. He shut up.

  The elevator doors opened.

  “Wait,” I told Seth, stepping out and quickly glancing left and right. The hallway was empty, save for a few potted plants sitting between the office doors. “OK, let’s go.”

  Based on what we could make of the floor plans, the hallway on just about every floor wrapped around the building like a square-shaped doughnut. I kept Seth behind me as I peered around the corners. We made our way to the other side, where there were only two doors on the left side of the hall. Between the doors were old paintings of pastoral scenes made with swift brush strokes, each one held in an intricate brass frame.

  “This is it,” Seth said, stopping in front of the first door. The words “Server Room” were written on a plaque on the wall.

  “Yeah, I sort of guessed that.”

  He looked at me. “Sarcasm duly noted. Are we ready to really do this? Last chance to back out. I mean, someone is probably watching us on a camera right now. We could pretend we were lost and go back to the gala and maybe have a glass of soda before heading on our way. Man, I could use an iced cola right now.”

  I peered down the hall, examining the walls and ceiling. “You’re right: there’s probably are cameras somewhere. We need to hurry.”

  Seth grabbed the door handle, pulled, then
looked at me and whimpered.

  “I think you have to push,” I said with a wry smile.

  He pushed. The door opened. And immediately an alarm went off.

  Chapter 8: Briar

  Br’er Rabbit just kept digging nice and slow. “My eyes ain’t big for nothing, Br’er Wolf.”

  [xiii]

  Well, things just couldn’t go down without a hitch, could they now? Nope … that would be too easy, and you know those dastardly dwarfs aren’t so stupid as to leave their wonderful fancy computing devices unprotected.

  I saw it all, of course. Dear old sweet Briar the helper rabbit was no slouch during all of this, I can guarantee you that. The moment Alice let me in through the secret sewer entrance, I high-tailed it to the stairwell, slipping in and out with nary a soul in sight. On the thirteenth floor, I broke into a vent near the ceiling—no small feat, I must say!—and made my way into the server room.

  Which is where I remained for the next twenty minutes. Stuck, once again.

  If you remember, it happened before. My fur got stuck in a little crack where two pieces of the vent were screwed together. It was an awful, traumatic experience, one which I vowed would never happen again.

  Well, it happened again.

  This time, it was my vest that got caught, and being inside a tight vent made it impossible for me to maneuver myself in such a way that I could gain any sort of pull on the piece of fabric caught on one of the screws.

  “Oh, some spy you are,” I muttered to myself. “Here you are, stuck in a vent. You’re supposed to be the back-up!”

  I tugged again. It was no use. Every time I gave a strong pull, the entire vent shook and wobbled, audibly groaning under my very average weight. The only way I was getting out of his vent was down. And quite frankly, I didn’t want to be down there. The entire room was lined with rows of big, loud, humming machines that made my fur stand on end. A room full of vacuums wouldn’t have been as scary.

  My lamentations were cut short as the door inside the server room opened. I could strain my neck and peer through the air grate well enough to see the room was pretty darned dark; when the light from the hall shined in, I could see all of the big refrigerator-shaped machines sitting in neat rows along the floor. They hummed and had little blue lights blinking and were generally the type of thing that would send my fellow animal kingdom friends running in the opposite direction … much like a vacuum cleaner. It was obvious to me that these infernal machines were the work of evil … something so big and loud could only be used for nefarious purposes.