The Grimm Chronicles, Vol. 2 (38 page)

“She pushed your feet off,” Chase said, shrugging. “So what?”

Clyde smiled. “That’s the first time
ever
that Rach has done something unexpected, man.”

A little meek smile crept up one side of her face.

“Elaborate,” Chase ordered. His eyes were narrowed, almost suspicious.

Clyde tugged on his flannel sleeves. “Rachel’s predictable, man. Always has been. It’s why I dig her. I don’t have to think too much around her. You guys on the other hand … man! You make my brain hurt.”

“She
is
predictable,” Chase said. He rubbed his stubbly chin. “She’s also got great fencing potential.”

“No, not really.” Rachel laughed nervously. “You’re just being nice.”

Chase shook his head. “Nope. I’m being honest.”

Rachel sat up a little straighter. She cleared her throat. “Still don’t believe ya.” But she totally did. She looked proud. Confident.

At least there was
that
.

This is the part where I leave school early for library and everyone else finishes up classes for the day. Then, in the early evening, everyone gets some homework done—the good students do, at least—and then whittle away the time before bed. Then everyone goes to bed and has wonderful dreams about sugar plums and supermodels and Hollywood hunks.

But not yours truly. Yes, I understand I’ve complained about this before. But you know what? I’m allowed to complain a little bit. I was sacrificing my beauty sleep and social life to save the world, for crying out loud. And besides, what was about to happen over the course of the next week was like nothing I’d experienced before.

I fell asleep that night listening to Briar’s soft snoring, and felt myself jolted back to that very same schoolhouse. Only this time the classroom was empty. I stood patiently, digging my toes into the dirt floor, waiting for something to happen.

Thunder happened.

The rumble shook the window in its frame. I hurried over, searching the little town. Sure enough, the same cloaked figure was advancing down the hard-packed dirt road. The pitch-black thunder clouds churned above him, seeming to follow his progress like obedient pets. His hood was drawn over his face, his wart-ridden green fingers slipping out from the sleeves of his cloak. His dragon pendant swung from his around his neck.

I ran outside. Yup, Crazy Alice the hero ran outside to meet him, not realizing she didn’t have her trusty magic pen with her. Not realizing just what kind of danger she was in.

The moment his hood lifted up, a blinding bolt of lightning hit the road between us. I felt my feet lift off the dirt.

“Woah,” I said, surprised to hear my own voice. I held out a hand—I was visible. I could hear my voice. This wasn’t the usual “follow the Corrupted” dream.

Another crack of lightning hit the metal sign of one of the small square buildings beside the road, sending a shower of sparks that landed on the cloaked figure. His black robe caught fire.

“Yessssss,” I hissed, clenching my fists.

A drop of rain landed on my forehead. Then another. Then a dozen more. I wiped the water away from my eyes. When I opened them again, I could see the sheet of rain approaching me. It was like a curtain of water, traveling down the road, hitting the cloaked figure and putting out the flames on his robe, then slamming into me like a ton of bricks.

The sound was deafening, like applause in a sports stadium. I floated backward, wiping furiously at my eyes. I tried to step on the ground, but my ghost form wouldn’t fully obey my commands. All around me, the dirt road seemed to be exploding as the thick droplets landed and burst.

“Come on,” I said, reaching down with my tippy-toes. The rain soaked through my shirt and pajama bottoms. I wiped the water from my face again, then searched for Agnim.

And screamed.

Before I could lift my arm to defend myself, his sickening green hand was around my throat. I clutched his arm. The sleeve of the black robe was pulled back and I could see the green hideousness of his boil-ridden skin, blackened in places as if he’d been recently burned.

“You think you control this dream?” he asked in a low, guttural growl. I kicked wildly at him, but his reach was too long. He kept his head down, his hood covering his face. Water slid over the fabric, the rain coming so fast that it created little waterfalls at the edge.

“Let go,” I choked out. I didn’t even want to touch his disgusting hand, but I had to try and pry his fingers away. His wet skin was slippery, his nails black and broken.

“A storm comes for this town,” he said, squeezing tighter. I coughed, feeling my lungs fight desperately to open up an airway. “Or should I say came? After all, this has already happened. What you see now is nothing more than a fleeting after-image. You and I aren’t here. I’m safely in my lair. You’re tucked in bed with your loyal
leporidae
companion sleeping peacefully on the floor.”

“
Leporidae
?” I asked, picking at his fingers for a reprieve.

“Otherwise known as a
rabbit
.” He cocked his head. From somewhere underneath that black hood, I was sure he smiled. “You’re not the only one armed with
knowledge
, hero.”

Above us came a loud crack of thunder. I felt my breath escape my body. I was choking. I was really, really choking! My fingers clawed desperately at his, pulling one away, then another, then a third, screaming out the last little bit of air left in my lungs.

Agnim let go. I floated backward, taking in a long breath. The rain pushed me downward. I felt my feet touch the wet, muddy road. I scraped my toes, scooping up mud, trying to gain some kind of traction.

“Come on!” I shouted, looking around frantically for something, anything that I could use to defend myself. I felt a surge of panic. It was as if his cold, strong hands were still tight around my neck. Whatever was happening here was even more intense than the dream experience on the cursed ship. This dream felt real enough to
kill me
. Man, was I missing the good old days when Corrupted couldn’t see me in my dreams.

Agnim stood silently in the middle of the muddy road, watching me from underneath his hood. The rain didn’t seem to be soaking through his robe at all, as if it was made of some water-resistant material. And he wasn’t
standing
on the road, either. He was floating, just like me.

He moved forward. Slowly.

“Give me a break!” I shouted, using my heel to push myself backward. I turned myself around, trying to swim through the air. It was working. It was working! I swam past an old general store, then a red house with shuttered windows, then a store that had recently been painted white, its paint slowly washing off onto the porch, pooling at the base of the steps where the road dipped. The sign—Ace Telegraph Service—had been recently painted, too, and the red letters were quickly bleeding away under the intense force of the downpour.

“Come to me,” Agnim whispered.

I spun around. He was following me, his green hands folded together in a patient vigil. A strange, red glow appeared between his fingers.

“Come on!” I shouted, kicking my legs wildly in the air.
Go lower
, I told myself.
Go lower
.
Envision yourself dropping to the ground
.

The rain hit harder now, painfully pelting my face. I risked looking up into the black clouds. They blotted out the sun, casting the entire empty town in a shadow. Looking up and seeing the millions of thick rain drops only made me dizzy, so I turned back to Agnim, hoping I could keep the distance between us for a few moments more. Until I could reach
something
.

“Wake up,” I hissed between clenched teeth. “Come on, Alice. Sleep’s overrated anyway. Let’s just read a book until it’s time to go to school.”

A sinister laugh cut through the loud pat-pattering of raindrops. “Do you not understand, hero? You are not. In. Control.”

His spread his hands. The red glow grew brighter, forming a ball shape that flared with energy. This was bad news—I had to
move
.

But how?

The light post! There, just past the Ace Telegraph building: a light post, tall and green and only a few feet away. If I could just swim my way there …

I kicked my legs furiously just like I learned in swim class, floating through the air. An intense burst of raindrops blinded me and I had to reach out with my hands, grasping for the cold metal. I got it! I clutched the post, wiping my eyes, searching for Agnim.

He was still in the middle of the road, still clutching the fiery red ball between his hands. His fingers shook violently, as if he was struggling to contain the magic. Water drops landed on the ball, hissing and evaporating into steam.

“Oh that is so not good,” I said, tensing my bare feet against the wet light pole.

The fiery ball expanded. The light from the flame illuminated Agnim and even with his head bent low, I could see his green chin, his pointed green nose, his black lips pulled back to reveal a set of sharp carnivore’s teeth clenched together.

“Pretend this isn’t a dream,” I ordered my tense legs. “Pretend we might actually die, legs. Because we
might
.”

Agnim brought his hands forward. The ball followed, breaking apart and growing a hundred times brighter. My legs pushed me off even before I was ready, propelling me across the street. I spun, watching the ball turn into a dozen small beams of red light, slicing through the air and evaporating the rain. Three of the beams cut through the light post, melting the metal. The rest traveled another dozen feet, then seemed to fizzle out under the downpour of rain.

With part of its structure melted away, the light pole slowly bent over, then snapped in two, splashing mud as it hit the road.

“Oh holy crud,” I said, turning swiftly around just in time to reach out and grab the edge of a small house on the other side of the road. The wooden panels were rough hewn, and I felt a sharp pain as a large splinter of wood dug into the palm of my right hand.

But at least I had something to hold onto. At least I wasn’t floating helplessly like an astronaut in the middle of space. I looked back to Agnim. He’d turned to face me. Another fiery red ball was forming between his green hands. As the glow grew more intense, the rain near the ball hissed and turned to steam. The glow illuminated Agnim’s rotten teeth.

He was smiling.

He pushed the ball toward me. I jumped, watching the ball break off into a dozen beams of red light that peppered the house, burning through the wood like it was made of paper. Little snake-like trails of steam rose up from each beam before they dissipated.

This time, I didn’t have a chance to reach the other side of the road. Agnim moved quickly, crossing the road and reaching out. I could feel his grip even before his repulsive hands closed around my throat. He held me up in the rain.

“Are your dreams safe?” he asked, digging his nails into my skin. He pulled me closer. I could almost see underneath the hood. I didn’t want to, though. I didn’t want to see his face. I closed my eyes, letting the hard raindrops pelt my soft eyelids.

“Wake up,” I whispered.

“I will torment you,” he hissed, spitting rainwater onto my cheeks. “I will break your mind and then, only then, will you face me. Broken. Defeated. And before I kill you, you will watch the
Awakening
and know that your world is doomed. Open your eyes.”

My eyelids forced themselves open against my wishes. I looked away from Agnim’s shrouded face, then gasped. It wasn’t just rain falling from the sky anymore.

There were frogs, too.

Chapter 8

I woke with both hands clutching my neck. Briar’s furry paws were wrapped around my fingers, pulling desperately.

“Gak!” I coughed out, letting go.

Briar’s fur stood on end. He pretended to wipe sweat from his brow, then glanced nervously at the door. My alarm was going off, morning sunlight streaming in through the window. “Er, I’m not sure exactly where to start.”

I turned off the alarm, waiting a moment for my mind to get itself right. “Hide,” I said, recognizing the stomping of my father’s feet on the staircase.

Briar disappeared.

The door opened. Dad had his hair combed. He was wearing a red tie, too, which was totally weird.

“You OK?” he asked.

“Are you?” I asked, nodding to his tie.

“Oh. Um.” He grabbed the tie, staring at it. “I have to give a presentation to the ad agency’s board this afternoon. They’re going to yell at me, so I thought I’d wear a red tie.”

“What the heck does
that
mean?”

“Red is a power color.” He shrugged. “It can’t hurt.”

“Those khakis will,” I said, getting out of bed. I glanced down, half-expecting to see my feet caked with mud. But they were clean. I pushed Dad into his bedroom and opened his closet. I grabbed a pair of dark gray slacks. “These,” I said, “will help give the impression that you know what you’re doing.”

“Thank you, dear.” He started unzipping his pants. I turned away, pretending to throw up.

“Gross, Dad!” I ran to the door, shutting it behind me.

“Just kidding!” he called back.

I waited, scratching at a dull pain in my hand. I looked down and gasped. A splinter! I used my nails to pull it out, wincing in the process.
Great
, I thought,
my dreams are trying to kill me
.

“Where’s Mom?” I called through the door. “Doesn’t she usually dress you so you don’t look like a dork?”

“She does,” Dad called out. “But she had to get to the office early. Her agency’s ads didn’t do so well last quarter, either.” He opened the door, proudly showing off the gray slacks. “Good?”

I nodded.

He bent down, kissing the top of my head. He sniffed in. “Better take a shower. You smell a bit like a wet dog, dear.”

I aimed to give his butt a swift kick, but the old fool jumped out of the way. “We’ll both be home late,” he said, hurrying down the hall. “
Late
late. You’re on your own for dinner.”

“Pizza it is!” I called out. I went back into my room, shutting the door. “It’s safe.”

Briar reappeared beside the desk. He sat down and flipped open my laptop. “I do say, I feel quite good about my invisibility once again. I feel in control.”

“Wonderful,” I murmured, opening my closet door and searching for fresh clothes. Lots of them were piled on the floor, waiting to be washed. Just another thing I needed to find time for this week. First: find and destroy the maniacal wizard. Second: laundry.

“So … why exactly were you choking yourself?”

“I wasn’t,” I said, searching my sock drawer for two matching socks. “It was the wizard.”

“Agnim?” Briar asked, his voice cracking.

“Who else? We only have one maniacal wizard tormenting us. I
hope
.”

“You mean he saw you?”

“Yup. Hey, remember when you were like
Oh, don’t worry—the monsters can’t see you in your dreams
, and then the monsters were all like
Hey Alice, we can totally see you
! Remember that?”

“Not exactly.” His whiskers twitched. “Although I do see what you’re getting at.”

I grabbed a violet sweater and a pair of blue jeans. “Stay turned around, please.”

“Right, right. So Agnim could see you just like the sailors—and the captain, presumably—aboard that cursed ship. So very strange.”

“No, it wasn’t just that he could
see
me,” I said, closing the closet door. My poster of Ryan Gosling stared back at me. Sigh. Remember when I used to finish my homework and just stare at Ryan for a good hour because I didn’t have a care in the world?

Yeah. Me neither.

“Alice! Will you please finish your sentence?”

I spun around and shook my head, clearing away naughty thoughts. “Sorry. Right. We were talking about Ryan Gosling?”

His ears flopped down. “We’re doomed.”

“OK. Wait. Right! The dream. So Agnim could see me, but that wasn’t all. He was … I don’t know … it was like he could control the dream. And then he almost fried me with some sort of magic spell.”

“Spells!” Briar pounded his paw on the desk. “Now that’s a start. If only we could figure out who this dastardly fellow is … was there anything else?”

I walked over to the window, picking absently at my teeth as I watched Dad’s car pull out of the driveway. I needed a shower … and some floss …

“Alice!”

My entire body snapped to. I shook my head again. “Oh gawd. I’m losing it, Briar. I feel like I didn’t get a wink of sleep last night and now I’m acting all spacey. I get this way when I don’t get much sleep.”

He sighed. “I’m aware.”

“So what do I do?” I asked, wide-eyed. “He’s going to come after me again tonight!”

“We must learn more about him. Tell me: what else do you remember from your dream? Try to stay focused now. You can sleep in your Genetics class.”

He was right. I was doing pretty well in Genetics. I was doing pretty well in every class. Not
great
anymore. Not all A’s … but all B’s … and that was going to have to be good enough for the time being.

“Alice! Consarn it!” He waved his paws wildly in front of my face.

“OK. We were in a little town.” I closed my eyes, trying to picture the scene. “A storm was coming … Agnim arrived with the storm … there was a schoolhouse … there was an Ace Telegraphs, whatever that is …” My eyes snapped open. I grabbed Briar’s shoulders. “There were frogs!”

“Er, frogs?”

“They were falling from the sky!”

His eyes narrowed. “Say what now?”

“Falling from the goshdarn sky, Briar!” I waved my arms around the room. “Like, for real!”

He crossed his legs and tapped his cheek with one paw, thinking. I loved when he did that.

“Agnim said the scene in my dream … the town … it was real. He said my dream was of a different time. That storm was real, Briar.”

He turned to the laptop, typing furiously. “This definitely reminds me of that time I was down south with Eugene. Were the frogs alive?”

“Yup.”

“Just like when we fought that Corrupted fairy. If only I could remember the name of the town ...”

“But what does it all mean?” I asked. “Hurry. Seth will be here to pick me up any minute.”

Briar typed furiously on his keyboard. “If I can find the town, maybe we can begin connecting the dots. This will require some detective work. I’ll send a message to my historian friend post-haste. He will surely know … oh dear.”

He tried clicking away but I swatted his paw before he could close his Facebook window. “What the heck is
that
?”

Briar’s eyes went wide. “It appears to be you.”

“I know it’s me.” I could see that plain as day: it was me walking down the first-floor hallway at school. I was wearing the exact same shirt I was wearing now, which meant it had probably been taken a week ago. My hair looked awful, meaning whoever had taken the photo had caught me after fencing practice.

There were more photos, too. It was a Facebook page dedicated to “Fashion Failures,” as the massive headline so boldly explained. They were all girls from Washington High. And underneath every single picture was a nasty little diatribe explaining exactly what “fashion crimes” the alleged perp was guilty of.

I grabbed the mouse, nearly pulling its cord from the USB port of my laptop. “Guilty of wearing too much
purple
? It’s not
purple
! Who’s doing this?”

I scrolled to the names of the page’s creator. Cynthia Blake, the Mean Girl equivalent to Joey Harrington. And there, under “fans,” were all of the other Mean Girls and their boyfriends. And Tricia.

And Briar, who was a “fan” of over a gazillion pages.

“What are you doing?” Briar asked as I sped back to the closet.

“Don’t look! I’m changing.”

“Why are you changing?”

“Because I can’t wear a purple shirt to school
now
! Gawd, Briar, do I really have to spell it out? You can turn around now.”

He sighed, examining the plain gray blouse I’d put on. “Humans.”

I made a point of lying low the entire day. Even in Mr. Feinman’s class, I stayed quiet. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself, knowing full well that a significant portion of the school had probably seen that horrible web page. My suspicions were confirmed when we broke off into groups to discuss our poster presentation.

“It’s probably for the best that you stay away from purple,” said Jennifer Wisenhunt, the perky blonde volleyball player who was pretty good at commenting on everyone’s business. “I mean, no offense, but it’s just one color. And you don’t want to get on the Mean Girls’ bad list any more than you already are.”

“Helpful, as always,” I murmured.

“Hey, can we just focus on this?” asked Brad Johnson, our other group member. “We have to create a poster about strikes. What is a strike?”

“It’s when the workers walk out to protest something,” Jennifer said. She pulled a nail file out of her red purse and started going to town on her thumbnail. “My grandpa did one at the steel factory he worked at. He said he got beat up.”

“By whom?” I asked.

“Strikebreakers.”

“Did he fight back?” Brad asked, wide-eyed. “I’d ‘a socked em in the face.”

“No, dummy. None of them fought back. That’s why they won.”

“You lost me.”

She sighed. “In the papers the next day, everyone was all like,
Ooooh, the steel company beats up its own workers
, and
Ooooh, all they wanted were hardhats
. So the steel company gave in because looked like total jerkwads.”

“That helped during the Civil Rights movement, too,” added Diego, the quietest of us. “Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached nonviolence.”

“Let’s make those for our poster,” Brad said. He grabbed the box of colored pencils and pulled out the red one. “I’ll draw all the blood and stuff. Alice, you can do the writing.”

“Why can’t I help with the drawing?”

Brad raised his eyebrows and smiled a dorky braces-laced smile. “Because if there’s one thing this picture doesn’t need, it’s
purple
.”

I groaned. It was going to be a long day.

Thankfully, fencing class offered a reprieve from the hour-to-hour anxiety. I unleashed it on Margaret and Jasmine and Rachel, holding nothing back. Chase spent most of his time coaching Rachel, giving her outrageous tips on how to move her feet and block my best shots. Her strength was almost overpowering at times—thankfully, she still couldn’t quite break the bad habit of making predictable moves, letting me sneak in for a few pokes.

Jasmine and Margaret were tougher. Margaret was definitely getting better, and Jasmine had an incredibly annoying habit of making her foil dance in the air, like it had a mind of its own. It annoyed me. And then I started thinking about the fact that I would be doing so much more if we had more sabers to practice with and didn’t have to share with the boys, and then I started thinking about how much money the football team got for equipment, and
then
I started getting aggressive with my attacks.

It didn’t win me any friends in the locker room that day (and I have a funny feeling Jasmine made a point of leaving before I could ask to borrow her hairbrush), but I needed the release. Even just a few hours of worrying constantly about whether someone passing me in the hall had seen the Mean Girls’ website was causing me so much stress that I seriously felt sick to my stomach.

I barely touched my salad at lunch. I gave it to Clyde, who’d simply brought a roll of crackers for lunch. He piled dressing-enhanced lettuce on each cracker, then a mini tomato. Watching him made my stomach feel worse.

“I really think you should just beat them up,” Seth said later at the library. “Pow! Pow! A couple knuckle sandwiches to their pretty little kissers.”

“What are you talking about?” Chase asked, ducking to avoid Seth’s wild kung-fu moves as he wheeled up to our table. He had a lap full of old history books. “The Mean Girls, or the weird  cult?”

He shrugged. “Either? I dunno. Seems to work pretty good in the movies.”

“Well this isn’t a movie,” I said. I hefted a stack of fiction books in my hands. I had one more stack left and then I was free for the day, thankfully. My energy was sapped.