Storykiller (15 page)

“—Cause plans made by that dude always go so well,” Brand muttered.

Grey nodded his head in acquiescence before he continued. “Anyway, she hooked me up with Fairy Godmother, and the rest is history…or something,” he finished. Tessa looked between Grey and Snow
.

“Do you owe her anything? Payment, favors—anything?
Are you all paid up, or whatever, for her connecting you to—and I can’t believe I’m saying this out loud—Fairy Godmother?”

Grey cast a hard glance at Snow. “We’re all paid up.” The steel in his voice made Tessa never want to know what Snow’s price had been.

“Good. Second order of business. Do you have any intention of killing me in order to close the dimension border?”

“What?! Of course not. I’m no killer. I mean, except, like…myself.”

The group stood around awkwardly, caught between the weirdness and the discomfort of the statement. Tessa broke the silence.

“Good. Then you can live and we can all be friends,” she said, turning to get into Snow’s car.

“Wait!” Grey cried and put his hand on the door. “I mean, you can’t just walk away, I have so many questions, I haven’t seen a Story in more than a year, and you’re The Scion, and—” Tessa got in the car and pulled the door shut. She looked back up at him through the window.

“Do you have a car?”

“Yeah,” Grey said, nodding to a big beat-up jeep at the end of the parking lot.

“Okay, meet us at Grand and Fairfax downtown. Bring Micah and Brand with you, I can’t fit them in here.” No sooner had she finished the sentence, then Snow gunned the engine and the car leapt away from them at an alarming speed. Micah, Brand, and Grey stood in the exhaust, dumbfounded, watching the streak of silver exit the parking lot.

“Wow. She’s very—take charge, isn’t she?”

“We call it bossy,” Brand said, pulling on the strap of Grey’s backpack. “C’mon, man.” The trio headed for Grey’s car in silence. Nobody knew what to say. Everything had been turned on its ear. Nothing fit or made sense anymore and yet, in other ways, nothing had changed at all. It was disturbing. And exciting. And strange. And scary.
And nobody knew what might happen next.

There were four things on the corners of Grand and Fairfax downtown. One was a Starbucks, naturally. One was the entry to a large residential condo building. One was a rival coffee shop that didn’t look like it was going to last long, despite being completely adorable. And one was a weapons store called BLADE. All caps, BLADE.

Nobody in the jeep was surprised to see Snow’s gleaming car parked in front of BLADE. Micah, Brand, and Grey climbed out of the jeep and walked into the store. A sign hung in the window:
Proprietor: Sammy Dee Profit
.

The trio plunged into the dark store where they watched, mouths agape, as Tessa swung a massive broadsword about the room, narrowly avoiding a variety of objects. A slender middle-aged woman in a superhero t-shirt and jeans, who could only be Sammy Dee, proprietor at large, winced as Tessa barely missed slicing the helmeted head off some antique knight’s battle armor. Tessa put the sword down on the counter that Snow was leaning against, clearly bored out of her mind.

“I’ll take it, Sammy, er, rather, she will,” Tessa said, thumbing her finger at Snow, who nodded. Sammy, clearly having seen far weirder things in her life than a teenager with a broadsword, smiled easily. Tessa turned to face her friends and gestured widely to the store. “What do you guys want? Snow’s buying.”

Micah looked around, wide-eyed. “How does something like this exist? I mean, Lore’s a decent-size city but enough to warrant a shop like this, and called BLADE no less?”

Romeo smiled at her. “Your thinking is backwards. This shop surely exists because this is Lore, regardless of the size. I’d bet now that you know Tessa, and know about Story, you’re going to notice a whole lot more weirdness. The kind of weirdness that justifies a shop like this.”

Micah nodded and then looked at Sammy. “Got anything a little less intense than a broadsword?

“Smaller blades are in the back, on the left. That includes hatchets and daggers,” she said, gesturing absently as Tessa’s pile of potential weapons purchases grew ever larger. Micah nodded and she and Brand headed to the back of the store.

Grey moved to follow Tessa. “Tessa, can we talk?”

Tessa picked up a long cruel looking sword with spikes on one side. “Yeah, but talk and browse. I’ve got a weapons cache to build. Some new thing breaks into my house every damn night and all I’ve got is a baseball bat. It’s a good bat, but I need an upgrade. Besides, my dad will kill me if I break that bat.”

“Sure,” Grey said, running his fingers across some of weapons on a rack absently. “So, are you going to tell anyone where I am? Who I am?”

Tessa looked up at him, surprised. “Of course not. Although, I obviously can’t say what ‘Her Worship Of The White’ will do,” Tessa said, nodding her head in Snow’s direction. “Not really in control of her at all. She seems to help me, at great aggravation to herself, but I have no idea what her endgame is,” Tessa said, pointing a rifle at Snow and staring at her through the scope and then putting the gun down abruptly.

“Great,” Grey said, following Tessa’s gaze and watching Snow check her flawless reflection in the shiny blade of an axe on the wall. “So what you’re saying is, I’m screwed.”

“Probably,” Tessa said and then added, “Who exactly is looking for you?”

“If I had to guess? Everyone. It doesn’t sit well when the title character, or half of them, up and abandon their Story without a word. Juliet in particular is sure to be pissed. And as you know—” he paused and looked at Tessa. “You do know my S
tory, right?” Tessa shrugged.

“I saw the movie.”

“Which one?” Grey asked, one eyebrow cocked and then waved his hand. “Never mind. Anyway, our families are always at war, or on the brink of one. My leaving can’t have been good. I’m sure even if Juliet gets it, even if she doesn’t despise me, her family has certainly not taken it well. A slight against their daughter, a slight against them, any excuse to rekindle the fires of war, which have never gone out, quite frankly.”

“Gosh, I can’t image why you would ever want to leave,” Tessa said.

“But that’s not even it,” Grey said, taking down a sword, thin and tapered, with a decorative hilt, elegant compared to the brutish broadsword Tessa had been swinging.

“Nice,” Tessa commented regarding the sword while she took down both a modern and an ancient looking crossbow to compare them. Grey swung the sword a few times expertly, as if it was second nature, which Tessa supposed it must have been. “What were you saying?” Tessa asked as she loaded the crossbow with a sturdy bolt. Grey turned to her quite seriously.

“I was saying I didn’t leave because of the warring. I left because I was dying there. So much expectation and I never felt like it fit. I felt jammed into some mold that wasn’t me, maybe it never was. I was drowning. And I don’t think it
has
to be that way. I want to forge my own way, be my own man, whatever that means,” Grey said, staring at the sword. Tessa had stopped fussing with the crossbow and was watching him.

“I get it,” she said. He looked at her, his face full of emotion. “I get it,” she said again and turned away from him. She plunked both of the crossbows on the counter next to the broadsword, then a brutal looking dagger, a shorter, less aggressive-looking dagger, a handful of Chinese throwing stars, a small axe, and an armload of bolts and arrows for the crossbows. “Brand, Micah! Pick and get up here!” Tessa shouted. She turned back to Grey. “You have nothing to fear from me, okay? And I’ll do whatever I can to control Her Worship,” Tessa said. Grey smiled, grateful. “And throw that sword on the pile,” she said, nodding at his sword. There was a scrabble and a shout at the other end of the store. Tessa and Grey looked on, interest piqued. Brand and Micah eventually emerged, Brand empty handed and Micah with a badass hatchet. Brand looked around at a loss.

Sammy nodded at a pretty sword on the wall, “Try the Katana, kid.”

Brand looked up at it and pulled it down, he broke into a big smile and brought it to the counter. Sammy Dee smiled at Brand’s reaction, clearly pleased that she had helped Brand find his weapon, like a gifted matchmaker of violence.

“Ring her up,” Tessa said, pointing to Snow, who stood up and walked over to Sammy Dee
to do whatever thing it was she did that seemed to get her whatever it was she wanted.

Loading the weapons into Snow’s trunk, minus the three items Micah, Brand, and Greyson had picked out, Snow, who had been eerily silent during the whole “weapons adventure,
” eyed Tessa. “Do you even know how to use any of that stuff?”

Tessa shrugged her shoulders and closed the trunk. “Not really.” She paused and walked to the passenger door, “But I did pretty well with that awesome axe.”

Snow nodded at her across the top of the car. “Perhaps we should get you a trainer.”

Tessa said nothing. She wasn’t sure if she should confide in Snow that she’d already sort of asked the mysterious nighttime Stranger to get her one.

“I’ll reach out to The Court, perhaps they can put me in touch with an appropriate Story living in the Mortal world,” she said. Tessa shook her head.

“I don’t want anything from them.”

Snow glowered at her. “That’s an interesting change of tune. You’ve been using my help quite freely, now you suddenly don’t trust me?”

Tessa looked at Snow sideways. “What on earth gave you the impression that I trusted you?” Tessa opened the door and slid into the car. It was true that she had been leaning heavily on Snow the last few days for information, to get her things, and to get her from point A to point B, but it didn’t mean she trusted her. Quite the opposite, in fact. Part of the reason she was staying so close to her was to keep an eye on her. And while she couldn’t help but feel grateful that Snow had warned her about Bluebeard, and that intervention had probably saved Brand and Micah’s lives, there was a difference between using Snow and trusting her. No, Tessa didn’t trust anything about Snow, and it was hard to imagine that changing.

Snow got in the car and gunned the engine. T
hey took off in silence. But Tessa couldn’t help but notice a deadly chill in the air, despite the bright sun outside, as they rocketed down the street.

After one night of peace, Tessa woke up in the early still dark hours of Saturday morning to something breaking into her house,
again
. This time, she was more prepared.

Broadsword in hand, she went to investigate.

She found a giant jungle cat the size of a couch lying on the middle of her living room floor. It purred angrily at Tessa (if such a thing was possible) as her bare foot hit the foyer floor. Tessa recoiled in fear before catching herself and slowing her breathing. “Show no fear,” she reminded herself quietly, hoping the thing didn’t understand English. The tiger watched her closely, unmoving. Tessa racked her brain for fictional jungle cats and could only think of the
Jungle Book
.

“Nice Shere Kahn kitty,” Tessa said, approaching the cat, her sword at her side but lowered, as if in the hopes that the cat just wanted some nice milk. All the milk in the world and brought to it in the form of big meaty cows, but milk just the same. The cat roared and Tessa froze. The Tiger began to rise, and Tessa thought about just running full tilt for the front door, but partway through the motion of standing, the animal began to change shape. No sooner did she recognize what was happening than it had become a bird. A dark black crow. Could Shere Kahn shape-shift? She certainly didn’t remember that from the story. The crow flew up and perched on the mantelpiece for just a moment and then flew right at her head. Tessa threw her arms up to protect her face and felt the bird snatch a piece of hair from her head. Tessa yelped and spun around to shoo the bird away, only to find that it had disappeared. Or perhaps it shifted into a mosquito, Tessa thought, rubbing her head. Tessa climbed back up the stairs, dragging the broadsword behind her, bone-tired but anxious. Not three minutes later, her cell phone buzzed on her nightstand. Tessa answered it on the second ring and quickly
pulled it away from her ear as Micah and Brand screamed simultaneously something nearly unintelligible about a crow and hair.

“One at a time,” Tessa shouted over the din and then added, “Wait, are you guys having a sleepover?”

Micah piped in. “We live next door to each other, have since we were five, our bedroom windows face each other.”

“It’s like an old time-y sitcom over there,” Tessa said, trying to picture Micah and Brand talking to each other from their respective windows with tin cans and string over a small patch of grass.

“Haha,” Brand said sarcastically. “Can we get to the ‘what the hell’ just happened part of this conversation?”

“Yeah, okay. Same thing happened to me. Did your crow start out as Shere Kahn?”