Fable

  “Don’t eat it. There’s something wrong with it.” She pulled out a piece and noticed that it had flecks of color swirling around the white. She crumbled the popcorn in her fingers, and it was filled with something hard. Like wire.

  “There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just how I like it.” Reid grabbed the bucket back from her and began eating it with a vengeance.

  Mina stared at Reid. Really looked at him for the first time since she’d put on the 3D glasses. He looked different through the red and blue filter. The glasses made his copper hair seem to crackle in the light. His eyes even had a reflective glow in them. Then she saw his fingernails, and her heart caught in her throat. They were copper-colored. Not painted with nail polish, but really copper-colored. She’d seen only one other person with colored nails before…and he hadn’t been there to help her.

  She whipped off the glasses, and he was back to looking very human again. It was another Fae glamour. A trick. The Fae had learned long ago to hide their true natures from the physical plane. Just to be sure, Mina put the glasses back on, and once again she could see Reid’s true form.

  He turned his fiery eyes on her and smiled while he popped another copper-laced popcorn kernel in his mouth. She could hear the sound of metal crunching between his teeth.

  “Ah, I see you’ve finally taken notice of me. Tonight is about to get so much more interesting.”

  He reached toward Mina, and his hand crackled with electricity. A loud popping sound was heard as the movie film stopped reeling. The lights went out. As the theater plunged into total darkness, the screaming began.

  Chapter 11

  The popcorn bucket flew in the air as Mina stumbled backward onto the person sitting next to her and half flipped, half slid over the row into an empty seat in front of her. It was ultimate chaos. He had somehow killed the electricity. She was sure of it. But her main worry was getting as far away from him as she could.

  People were screaming and heading toward the emergency exits, the way lit by safety lights on the floor, but even those began to flicker and die out. She crawled along the filthy floor and was able to slide under the bar for the handicapped seating.

  A panicked moviegoer stepped on her hand, kicked her in the stomach, but she was afraid to show herself. She needed everyone to get out of the theater, and fast. This was not the place for a fight between a Grimm and a…what?

  Someone yelled her name, and she carefully peeked between the seats. She could see Nan by the emergency exits, refusing to leave the building, even though Brody was pulling on her arm. Nan screamed her name again, but thankfully Brody got her out the door to the left of the screen. People were still fighting to get out and trampling each other, but Reid was waiting for the same thing.

  Mina looked back up a few rows and saw Reid standing exactly where she’d left him, smiling crazily. His hands let off a few more sparks, and he reached out to touch the person closest to him, the large bearded man still sitting and eating his extra-large tub of popcorn, undisturbed by the commotion around him. But once Reid’s hand touched him, he froze and turned to stone. No, not stone, metal. His sparks lit up the theater like a strobe light.

  Her heart stopped beating. “Jared,” she whispered. He heard, he answered. He came out of nowhere like an avenging angel, springing on Reid’s back, and they both crashed into the row in front of them, breaking chairs in the process.

  Mina pulled out the Grimoire, knowing that she needed help but also needed to keep her distance at the same time. The book glowed, and it elongated into a crossbow.

  Holy buckets! Mina thought. She’d better get it right on the first shot. She popped up, steadied the crossbow on the back of a seat, and took aim, but a body was being thrown at her—Jared’s. She barely had time to turn before he landed on her full force and she became pinned between the seats.

  “Jared!” Mina yelled at him. “Get up. Move.”

  He didn’t answer—he couldn’t. He was unconscious. All she was able to do was solicit a small groan from him as she struggled to free herself. In the commotion, she’d lost the crossbow, and it had skidded under a seat.

  More flickering lights, laughter, and screaming mingled in the air. Her cheek rubbed against something sticky, but she gritted her teeth and stretched out her arm as far as she could. She could just barely reach the butt of the crossbow.

  She could see him, Reid slowly stepping down, row by row. He was almost to her, and she was still wedged underneath Jared’s prone form.

  “Come on,” she grunted, but it was too late. He was there.

  He jumped the last row and stepped on her hand to keep her from touching the weapon. His confident smile faltered into a frown. “This was too easy. Too easy to manipulate the human. Too easy to make myself one of you. I was expecting more from the newest Grimm and her protector. I’m greatly disappointed. Oh, well, maybe your friend—Nan, right? Maybe she’s got some fight in her.”

  “Hey, scumbag!” a voice yelled from behind him.

  Reid looked up and received a kick in the face from Ever’s big black army boot, catching him by surprise.

  “You want a fight, you got it!” she cried out in full Fae glory, wings and all, as she flew just beyond his reach. Ever looked furious, Ever looked glorious. She was gone in a second, hidden in the dark theater. The emergency lights finally went out, and Reid was forced to use whatever magic he had to create crackles of light to illuminate the theater to try to find her. But light wasn’t his strength, Mina discovered. It was turning things to copper, and copper conducted electricity.

  Mina struggled again, and was able to flip Jared onto his side and slide out from under him, but her weapon was now two rows down. She crawled low on her knees and tried to make it down the stairs without being seen. Ever was doing her best against the Fae, but without the element of surprise, she was obviously outmatched.

  He lunged toward her and caught ahold of her boot. She screamed as it slowly turned to metal. Her wings beat wildly as she tried to pull out of his reach, but he laughed and held on, reaching with his other hand to grasp her leg.

  She was out of time. Mina stood up and ran for the crossbow, cocked the string, and loaded the bolt. Without thinking she yelled out his name.

  “Hey, Reid, over here.” She released the arrow and prayed. With the luck of Fae magic, its aim was true, and it pierced Reid in the chest.

  “Thanks for the great date. Don’t call me—I’ll call you,” Mina chanted.

  He gasped in pain and let go of Ever’s leg. Her momentum made her crash into the wall, and she slid to the ground. Reid grasped the arrow protruding out of his chest. He started to laugh. “Now, there’s the fight I wanted. It makes for better storytelling.” More sparks danced from his fingertips, and the arrow slowly turned to copper.

  “How about this for your ending?” Mina asked, holding the crossbow. She tossed the crossbow into the air toward him, and it began to glow and radiate light and slowly turn back into a book. His face froze in horror, and he tried to pull the arrow from his chest. The copper on the bolt stopped spreading and began to recede in the face of the Grimoire’s power. The arrow of light became brighter and began to pull him toward the pages, like a fish on a hook.

  He whimpered and turned to grasp onto something, anything. He dug his hands into the chair, but it began to give in to the powerful vortex created within the pages. Reid’s body floated in the air and was slowly getting pulled into it. He worked himself hand over hand until he was holding onto the metal head of the large man he had turned to copper, but he was no match for the Grimoire.

  With a final scream of defeat, Reid lost his grip and was sucked into the Grimoire. The book continued to pull, drawing popcorn buckets, drinks, candy boxes, and even a few lost cell phones into its pages. The book closed with a snap, and the theater was once again clothed in darkness. Mina could feel a suffocating sensation of power fill the room. It felt heavy, like a pressure on her chest, and she knew that in the darkness something
magical was happening.

  A few intense seconds went by before the power in the building came back on, and with it the overhead lights. Her hand went to protect her eyes from the extreme change from darkness to light. The theater was still destroyed. Ever was hopping toward her with one boot missing. She knelt by Jared and helped him up. He had a huge bruise on his cheek but seemed to be fine otherwise. Mina went to help Ever, and they both half carried, half dragged Jared out to the emergency exit.

  A loud slurping noise echoed from behind them, and Mina snapped her head around to look at the only other inhabitant of the destroyed theater. It was the very large bearded moviegoer, fully human again, happily slurping away at his drink.

  “Best 3D movie ever,” he said.

  Chapter 12

  “What happened in there?” Nan cried out, and wrapped her arms around Mina. “It went dark. I heard a loud popping noise like gunfire. Are you okay? Is Jared okay?”

  “Yeah, we’re okay, but we could use help with Jared.”

  Brody jumped in and gripped his strong arms around Jared, and swiftly moved him away from the theater and farther into the parking lot. Groups of people stood in clusters, watching the building, pointing and snapping pictures on their phones. The fire department arrived, and more uniforms rushed into the building.

  Mina collapsed on the ground next to Jared and ran her hands over his face in concern. The bruise on his cheek was getting larger, and his eyes started to flutter open.

  “Hey, you,” she whispered when his eyes locked onto hers. And what beautiful eyes they were. They were filled with confusion and pain, and then when he looked at her, they crinkled up just ever so slightly in a smile. In the dark parking lot his gray eyes looked almost blue, and she felt herself catch her breath. A warm hand cupped her elbow as Jared gently rubbed it in return. “Glad you’re not dead.” She smiled warmly.

  “Takes more than a backhanded punch from a—”

  “—jealous boy,” Mina interrupted him, giving a quick glance at their captive audience.

  His eyes widened in understanding, and he lowered his voice so she had to lean forward to hear the next words out of his mouth. “Did you get him?”

  Mina looked at Ever and grinned. “Yeah, we got him.”

  Brody was shuffling back and forth uncomfortably in the cold, watching them, when he noticed their numbers. “Hey, where did Reid go?”

  Mina sat back on her heels and gave Brody a disgusted look. “He left.”

  “What do you mean, he left?”

  “Just what I said. When he didn’t get what he wanted, he up and disappeared.” She tried to say it with a straight face, but Ever snorted loudly from behind her.

  Nan was shocked. “What a jerk! Mina, you must feel awful. He didn’t try to take advantage of you, did he? I’m so mad—I want to go searching for him and give him a piece of my mind, and a kick in the rear. And Brody, why did you bring such a loser for Mina to date?”

  Brody stepped back in surprise and rubbed the back of his head. “I…uh…I don’t really remember why?” And it was a very good possibility that he didn’t even remember meeting up with Reid, or that the Fae used persuasion to get him to do what he wanted.

  A uniformed police officer came forward and began to take the statements from the crowd. The air became thick again with power, and she looked around in alarm. Jared gripped her elbow and sat up, sensing the same thing she did. Magic, but whose? Mina eavesdropped on the conversation and was surprised how quickly the stories of what had happened changed and morphed as the people were telling them. The Story was at work, covering up the incident in the theater by blanketing all of the witnesses with different versions.

  It was fascinating and scary how easily the Story could manipulate people. A man wearing a plaid shirt and blue knit hat told the police he saw a guy shoot bolts of lightning from his hands, but then his eyes got heavy and his voice started to slur under the powerful persuasion of the Story. The police officer asked him to repeat what he saw, and he changed his story.

  “It was fireworks. Some dude sneaked fireworks into the theater.”

  “No, it wasn’t!” a short red-haired woman interjected. “I saw it—he had those popping firework things.”

  “Are you dumb? It was a government conspiracy. A soldier came in with experimental strobe lights, and he was trying to hypnotize us. He was going to make us his slaves,” a man in a white tank top and NASCAR hat said.

  “It wasn’t a guy—it was a girl, and she was flying.” It was the large man from earlier, still slurping on his drink. “And I was turned to copper, but I’m all better now!”

  “Are you on drugs? There was no girl, it was a group of boys, and they were lighting things on fire. I saw it and jumped up and pulled the fire alarm.”

  “No, I saw someone in the projector room. They let off a smoke bomb,” an irritated teenager interrupted.

  “I think it was a breaker. An employee messed with the circuit breakers,” someone else yelled out.

  Slowly the truth was covered up by so many lies that no one could determine what had actually happened. Finally, the policeman shook his head and walked away, no closer to the truth.

  Jared stood up and let out a deep breath. Relieved.

  “I take it you’re used to this?” she asked.

  “Yeah, but you never know whether or not it will clean up after itself.”

  “You mean your brother,” she asked.

  He nodded. “Can I see the Grimoire real quick?” She handed him the book, and he flipped to the end and took a look at the pencil sketch of the fight between Ever, Reid, and Mina, and whistled in surprise. “Looks like you two make quite the team.”

  Ever raised her chin and stepped between them. “Only ’cause I had to. You were out of the picture, so someone had to help your charge. It’s not a job that I would cherish in the future. So don’t get used to it.”

  Brody came up behind them, with an arm protectively wrapped around Nan. “Hey, the police are saying it was just some prank, and no harm, no foul, so we can all go home. The theater is giving us all free tickets to see another movie, once they open up again.”

  Nan was blushing profusely at the attention from Brody, and Mina couldn’t help but feel sad and happy for her. The sudden onslaught of danger had thrown Brody into knight in shining armor mode again, and he instinctively reacted and protected his girl. Mina was delighted that he had protected Nan when she was unable to. How could she begrudge them happiness, if that was what they really wanted? Brody would always protect those closest to him—that was his nature. And if Nan was friends with a Grimm, than she would always need protecting, and she couldn’t think of anyone more suited than Brody. Now if only she could convince her heart of it.

  The ride home was silent. The gravity of what had happened in the theater caused the air to be filled with nervousness. She didn’t even ask Nan and Brody what they remembered from tonight, preferring to not know how much of their minds had been tampered with by the Fae. She curled up on the back seat and held the Grimoire close to her chest, and stared out the window into the night.

  Twice she caught Brody staring at her in the rearview mirror, but she quickly looked away and pretended not to notice. The small notebook grew warm in her hands, and she flipped it open to a blank page and stared in wonder as words began to fill up its pages.

  Did you enjoy your date tonight? ~T

  The words appeared for a few seconds and then faded into the paper. Teague must be writing in the book on the Fae plan to make it appear in hers on the physical plane. An image appeared in her mind of the dark-haired prince leaning over a golden column in a round room. On the column sat a very large and ancient book. He was looking around to see if anyone was spying on him, and then leaned forward to write in its pages with a white quill.

  She scrambled in her purse for a pen and tentatively wrote back on the Grimoire, her heart pounding with adrenaline.

  He was a disappointment. I had higher expectatio
ns. But I guess I’m hard to please. She couldn’t believe she was doing this, taunting the Story through the Grimoire. She didn’t even know it was possible.

  I’ll try harder to meet your expectations next time. And you can be sure there will be a next time…and a next…and a next.

  I will defeat you!

  There was a long pause, and she thought that he had left and stopped writing. She stared at the page, willing an answer to appear, but nothing came. Finally, when she was about to close the book in frustration, his answer came, written slowly and deliberately.

  Then I will look forward to that day when you confront me face to face.

  That day may be sooner than you think, Teague.

  I wouldn’t expect you to be the one speaking tall tales.

  Why did it seem like he was flirting with her? She could have sworn he was smiling when he wrote that, but how would she know? How could she so easily visualize him writing in the book, when she couldn’t see him? Or was it because he was connected to the tales as much as she was that they were connected also. Her stomach rolled in displeasure.

  Mina.

  She didn’t want to play this game anymore and almost stopped writing completely.

  What? she finally answered.

  I’m sorry.

  For what?

  For what I’m about to do…but then again…maybe not.

  The car had pulled to a stop in front of Nan’s apartment building, and Mina didn’t even know how long they had been sitting there. She looked up in alarm and saw Brody lean forward and kiss Nan on the lips. It was aggressive and very unlike him, and she knew then what Teague was doing. He was pushing Brody into kissing Nan. She knew then that he was truly evil and sadistic. She slammed the notebook closed and sat on it in frustration. The slamming noise and movement from the back seat broke the spell that Brody and Nan were under. Nan flushed pink, and Brody pulled back so fast from the kiss he hit his head on the rearview mirror.