The Grimm Chronicles, Vol. 2 (7 page)

Kinda.

“Seen that girl,” he sang out of tune, “watch her scream, kicking the dancing queen!”

I laughed. “Those aren’t the lyrics, you bonehead.”

“Sure they are.”

“No. Listen.” I turned up the music louder, then sang along to the chorus: “Sea of whirl, witching scene, within the dancing queen!”

Briar and Seth both started laughing. “That’s not even close!” Seth exclaimed. “Briar, you wanna give it a try?”

Briar waited for the next chorus. “I do believe they’re saying Sea that curls, within seas, tickle the dancing queen.”

We all laughed.

“OK, more,” Seth said, changing the radio. A classic song from The Killers came on. Seth started singing, “He doesn’t have to eat his Cheese Nips …”

Briar’s paw found the Seek button, changing it to an oldies station where Creedence Clearwater Revival was playing. “There’s a bathroom on the right!” he exclaimed with glee.

I switched over to a rock station playing the Rolling Stones. I recognized it and sang along, “I’ll never leave your feast ‘a burnin’!”

By the time we arrived in Minneapolis, it was dinner time and all of our voices were hoarse from singing. Minneapolis sat right beside the city of St. Paul, and together they were a sight to behold: two cities scrunched up together; tall skyscrapers, some of them with rounded tops and some of them with staircase-like corners; a beautiful river filled with white sailboats. We made our way into the city, guided in no small part by Briar’s intrepid map. We knew where the show was going to take place: The Triangle. We knew what was going to happen: certain doom.

What we needed next was a place to picnic. We found it after we got off the highway. In fact, you couldn’t miss it. We knew it was the best place to picnic because the park contained a giant cherry. To be more specific, inside the park was a sculpture of a giant spoon with a giant cherry, a sculpture so fantastic that Briar declared it “A great place to eat our sandwiches.” And while Briar wouldn’t be able to enjoy his meal in public, he’d solved that problem easily enough by nearly eating the entire bag of marshmallows on the trip up.

“This is a good sandwich,” Seth said. We were sitting on the fresh-cut grass using the cooler as a table. I’d packed a turkey-and-Swiss sandwich for myself and a turkey-ham-Swiss-mustard-onion sandwich for Seth. Somewhere during the car ride, when he’d taken a break from the marshmallows, Briar had eaten his ham-tomato-cookie sandwich.

“My sandwich could have used mustard,” I said. Over by the giant spoon, a handful of kids were running around like crazy, along with more than a few teenagers. They were playing tag. Not the kind of tag Briar and I played, where I was expected to pretend Briar was a Corrupted and had to tap him with a stick—no, these kids were just playing tag for
fun
. I envied them.

“How was your date?” Seth asked, breaking me from my daydream.

I shrugged. “He’s definitely a track guy.”

He raised an eyebrow. A snicker came from the invisible rabbit.

“I guess he might be OK,” I said. “I don’t want to judge
too
much from one date. And maybe he has a point about the library being kind of nerdy. I mean, I
am
a senior now. I should at least try to be cool, right?”

“Coolness is overrated,” Seth muttered, taking a monster bite of his sandwich. “You think Joey Harrington is going to be cool after he graduates? Pfft! More likely he’s gonna be in jail.”

I laughed. “Maybe you’re right.”

“Don’t settle,” Seth said. “And don’t make excuses for Ted.”

“OK.” I shook my head. “It’s so easy to forget that.”

“So do you like doing this?” Seth asked. “I mean, the whole saving the world thing?”

I shrugged, picking at the potato chips. “I’m pretty sure I have to, regardless.”

“Yeah but how long are you going to do it? Are you still going to college to be a nurse or whatever?”

“I’d
like
to be a nurse.” I took a bite of my sandwich, thinking. This wasn’t something that had been crossing my mind as much as it should. Everyone was talking about what they were going to do next year. Everyone in school was planning for tests and entrance exams and entrance essays.

“But how?” Seth asked. “I mean, these dreams just come out of nowhere, don’t they?”

“Yeah …”

He shook his head, taking another bite of his sandwich. “Well, you can always count on me to help. All I want in exchange is the opportunity to chase the giant rabbit with a vacuum cleaner.”

Beside us, there came the unmistakable sound of a snort.

Seth smiled. “I’m only kidding. No vacuums. Why is Briar invisible? Can’t he just, like, show himself to certain people?”

“Yes …”

“I would rather be safe than sorry,” came Briar’s voice. “Slip-ups in public can have disastrous and …
peculiar
consequences.”

I smiled. “Especially if you accidentally show yourself to a kid. You’d scar him for life.”

“Hey Briar, guess what?”

“What?”

“Chicken butt.” Seth smiled at me.

“I … er … um.”

“Guess why?”

“Why? I don’t even know—”

“Chicken thigh.”

“Alice, what
is
he talking about? Why is he mentioning parts of a chicken?”

Seth chuckled. “But seriously, I’ll help you guys whenever you need me. You know, maybe there aren’t that many Corrupted left anyway. Maybe you can stop them all and then you can still get your nursing degree.”

“Maybe.” I stared at my half-eaten sandwich, hardly convinced.

“Or maybe you and me and Trish can still go to college together and you can just fight some Corrupted on the weekend.”

I took a sip of my orange juice, trying not to get my hopes up. There were still so many names not crossed out in the
Grimms’ Fairy Tales
book. But maybe not
every
hero had crossed out the names. Maybe Seth was right.

Maybe.

Chapter 6

We parked a block away from The Triangle, biding our time with a very long game of “I Spy” and finishing off the bag of sweet potato chips. For a moment—just a moment—I forgot all about what was waiting in the bar and enjoyed myself. Here were my friends, I guess: a heavy metal nerd and a giant rabbit. All we needed was Trish and then it would be a party.

But if Trish were here, she and Seth would fight. And how would she handle all of this? Probably not too well.

By the time Seth and I finally guessed what Briar had spied—it was an empty bottle of soda sitting in the gutter at the end of the block—night had already fallen. Cars began parking along the curb on both sides of the street, and young men and women dressed in tight pants and expensive-looking shirts walked down the street to The Triangle.

“I guess I under-dressed,” I murmured, watching another couple get out of their car on the other side of the street. They looked very college: short, styled hair and outfits that looked like they came from
Gap
. One of the girls was wearing a pair of tight, dark blue jeans with a gold “B” embroidered on the butt. “I thought these guys were a rock band.”

“They play a lot of stuff,” Seth said. “Everyone likes them.”

All of the buildings on this side of the block were sketchy old things, warehouses mostly, but a few empty storefronts as well. Plenty of places for a trap. Keeping Briar’s teachings in mind, I tried to look beyond the basics, to the nitty-gritty details that would let me take firmer control of my surroundings. Let’s see … one of the empty storefront windows was cracked, there was a thick gutter drain hanging from the two-story building on the corner, and—oh yeah—of the three big green dumpsters in the alley, two were filled to overflowing …

“Man this is so insane,” Seth said. He tapped on the steering wheel a few times. “These Corrupted monster guys totally think they’re going to have the last laugh? Ha! He who laughs most laughs last.”

“I do believe the saying is
he who laughs first … laughs the most
,” Briar corrected.

Seth thought about it, then shook his head. “No, I think the person who’s laughing the most is going to be the one who laughs last.”

“Yes, but the person who starts laughing first is most likely the one who will laugh the most. By definition.”

“Yeah,” Seth said, “but whoever laughs last is the important part. Because it means the other person stopped laughing.”

“OK both of you knock it off,” I snapped. “I’m trying to focus.”

“I suspect there will be many people,” Briar said.

“Gee, ya think?” Seth asked. “Duh, rabbit. These guys are, like, total recluse geniuses. No one knows much of anything about them, except that their music is crazy. They didn’t even have a website before they planned this farewell concert.”

“He’s going to use that video feed to steal music from all over the world,” I mused, watching a couple scurry across the street. “We need to smash that fiddle.”

“We should have done this sooner,” Seth said. “Now there’s all these people and they’re totally gonna die.”

“No one’s going to die,” I told him. “And coming early wasn’t an option. They lock the doors between shows.”

“Ah!” Briar exclaimed. “An excellent detail remembered from your dream. No doubt a skill taught to you by a certain rabbit.”

I looked over my shoulder. “You ready?”

Briar nodded. He reached up and pulled his ears back. “As ready as I shall ever be, dear hero.”

I got out of the car and made my way across the street, watching Briar scurry between two of the rusty old warehouses.

“Watch the dumpsters!” I whispered to the dark shadow. Why hadn’t he turned invisible yet? No matter. The Corrupted could see him regardless. “You can climb up the gutter drain on the next building!”

“Use a gladius!” Seth called out from down the street.

I cringed, waving him away. He pulled out of his parking space, and immediately an old green Toyota took his place. Five hip-looking young people got out, hurrying across the street.

“Come on!” one of the hipsters called out to me. He adjusted his thick-rimmed glasses. “They’re only letting a hundred people in!”

“Oh crap,” I said, hurrying with them. I hadn’t even expected
not
to get in. Cripes! This was the beginning of music’s doomsday, for crying out loud.

When we reached the door, I recognized the bouncer as the bartender. He was eyeing everyone’s clothing before he let them in. “No pictures,” he said to every single person he let in. “No pictures. No pictures. No pictures.” He got to me, eyeing me up and down. “You twenty-one?” he asked.

I shook my head.

He sighed, scratching at his monstrous right ear. “No drinking tonight. No pictures, either.”

“OK, I promise.”

He held me there a moment more, then raised his slightly glowing, overly hairy arm, letting me inside.

It was exactly like my dream, only the ceiling lights had been dimmed so that the handful of stage lights on the other end of the room bathed the empty drum set in a glow. The pool tables were pushed to one side of the room. Dozens and dozens of people stood in front of the stage, squeezing up against the booths, squeezing around the bar waiting for the bartender to return so he could make them drinks.

“This place is so crazy.”

I turned around. It was the hipster with the thick glasses again. He adjusted them, then licked his thin lips. “You want a drink? I don’t touch the stuff myself. Not anymore. But I could get you one if you want.”

“No thanks,” I said. I glanced around. “Although a bathroom …”

He nodded. “I got ya. Need to freshen up and the like.”

That, and maybe draw a sword in the wall. “Yes. I need to freshen up.”

“That’s a nice purse.”

“Hmmm? Oh. Thanks.” I looked down at my little gray handpurse. It really wasn’t a nice purse. It was old, another disposable bag that I could throw away without shedding a tear if the situation got out of hand. If this whole saving-the-world thing kept up, pretty soon I’d have the entire bottom section of my closet cleaned out.

To our left, the door shut. The bartender twisted the knob in a strange way, then walked over to the bar and started mixing drinks. The door was locked now. There was no escape. If Briar didn’t succeed with his part of the plan, there might be bloodshed.

“Whoops, too late,” said the man with glasses. “They’re going to go on any minute. Look.” He pointed to the right of the stage, where a little door stood next to an old cigarette machine no longer in use. “They’re gonna come out of that door. I’m so stoked. You wanna get closer?”

“I do,” I said. “But first I
really
need to use the restroom.”

I fought my way through the crowd to the other side of the bar, where the men’s and women’s restrooms were. I went into the women’s, patiently waiting for the stall on the far end. It looked as if the place hadn’t been cleaned in years, with dirty floor tiles and brown scum lining the cracked porcelain sinks, but none of the other women seemed to care. Not even the young girl reapplying dark lipstick in front of a mirror so streaked with grime that you could barely see your reflection.

When it was finally my turn, I shut the door behind me and pulled the fountain pen from my purse. I drew a sword in the brick wall, which had been painted white and then desecrated with a fair amount of obscene graffiti. I drew a gladius instead of a saber, hoping its short blade might give me an edge if I had to take on the entire band.

Best case scenario: Briar cuts the power, the crowd disperses, and all four of the Corrupted surrender without a fight.

Worst case scenario: me fighting the entire band while at the same time fighting off all of the terrified, rabid fans who have no idea what’s going on.

“This is going to be a disaster,” I groaned, drawing a small drawer at the bottom of the wall. I opened it and put the gladius inside, closing it and cutting off the handle. It blended into the brick wall well enough that it would be unlikely someone might notice it.

“Are you almost done?” asked a woman outside the stall.

I flushed, put the pen back in my purse, then opened the door, giving the woman a friendly smile. She pushed past me, shutting the door quickly.

I left the restroom, now fully aware that my plan wasn’t a plan at all. It was a recipe for insanity. I fumbled with my purse again, hoping Briar was in place. Hoping the rabbit could shut off the power.

The lights dimmed. The door beside the stage opened. The crowd went wild. I clapped gently, standing on my tiptoes so I could watch them walk in. I was half-expecting them all to look like the smoke monster, but as the drummer and the bassist stepped out, I could see they were as normal-looking as anyone else in the crowd. The drummer—who was still wearing the same baseball cap as in my dream—sat down and promptly tapped every single drum.

Everyone cheered louder. I held my breath. Don’t cut the power yet, I mentally told Briar. Wait until they’re all on stage.

The crowd started chanting. “Peasants! Peasants! Peasants!”

Still no fiddler.

The crowd chanted even louder, then started applauding again. My fingers tightened around my purse. Something was wrong. They know I’m here, I thought.

Then, he came out. Or, rather, he
stumbled
out, bumping into the old cigarette machine before tripping onto the stage with his guitar clutched in one hand. The crowd cheered for a few moments and the drummer hit his snare drum a few times to keep up the energy. The fiddler stood up, staring at the crowd with lazy eyes. He was sweating … why was he sweating? He looked like he was ready to puke.

The crowd’s cheers died down a bit. Everyone looked anxious, waiting for the first song. The fiddler stood straight, staring at the crowd again with glassy eyes.

“Anytime, Briar,” I whispered.

The fiddler’s left hand found the neck of his guitar. He ran his pick over the strings.

A hideous sound escaped from the amps. No one danced. The crowd quieted further.

The fiddler’s clumsy fingers adjusted. He looked, once again, like he might barf. He strummed the strings again. I felt my heart race. Where was Briar? I unzipped my purse, clutching the pen, ready to go to Plan B …

And then the fiddler fell over.

The crowd went silent. A few people near the back shouted, asking what the heck was happening. A few swore.

“That’s alcoholism for you.”

I turned. It was the guy with the thick glasses again. He shook his head as the bassist tried to help the fiddler up. More people were shouting angrily now. One guy demanded his money back even though it was a free show.

“I’m a recovered alcoholic myself,” he said. He was a tall guy with pale skin. Probably in his thirties. Kind of a creepozoid, really. “Alcohol … it’s a drug. You can’t just drink and not expect consequences. Otherwise you end up like him. You see, alcohol is a depressant …”

“OK. Got it. Drinking is bad.” I rolled my eyes. “Sheesh!”

The lights went out. Only the red EXIT sign over the door by the bar and the red EXIT sign over the door by the stage illuminated the small space. More people began shouting, and now there was an angry surge toward the back door. The bartender hurried over, swearing and apologizing as he fumbled with the lock.

“Why was it locked in the first place?” asked someone.

“Get out!” the bartender shouted over the din of voices. “All of you ungrateful slobs, get out!”

“Uh-oh,” said the guy with glasses. “I guess the show’s over. You know, abusing alcohol really is bad …”

“Yeah, that’s really true. Thanks for telling me over and over and over,” I muttered, spinning him around and pushing him toward the door. “Please leave now before you die.”

I spun and made my way through the crowd, back to the women’s restroom. In the darkness, I fumbled my way to the last stall, opening the door and then closing it behind me. I reached down, my fingers accidentally touching the disgusting floor a few times before I found my little makeshift drawer. I pulled it open at the loose corners, reaching in and grabbing the gladius.

I stepped on the toilet seat, pressing one hand against the wall for leverage. “Please remember to wash your hands,” I whispered to myself, taking a deep breath.

Here we go.

This wasn’t exactly how I’d expected things to happen … but then again, I didn’t think the fiddler would get drunk before he enacted his diabolical scheme.

But that’s what alcoholism does to you, in the words of the creepy hipster. If only I could make a poster with the fiddler’s face on it—now
that
would keep Trish from abusing alcohol: “Hey, this guy almost managed to steal all the music from the entire world … but his alcoholism got in the way! You can steal all the music in the world, but you can’t abuse alcohol at the same time.”

Now it was improv time. What was it Briar always told me when we were training?

“Expect the unexpected. Anticipate.” At this point, he would always raise one paw. “Plan ahead, then plan ahead again. And always have a sword ready.”