UnEnchanted (20 page)

Mina was pacing her room and thinking of
some of her favorite fairy tale characters when she passed her
bedroom mirror. She stared at her reflection and touched the fabric
of her red jacket, a reminder of the many piles of red clothes that
littered the floor. Mina realized that no matter what fairy tale
princess or character she would try to go as, the Story would keep
making her into the same one.

“
How about Red Riding
Hood?” Mina intoned sadly.

Brody’s voice brightened. “Then I will be
your hunter. Never fear, Mina, I’ll keep the big bad wolf
away.”

Those words sent a tingle of dread through
her limbs. She felt the power of the Story at work and actually
feared that very conclusion.

***

After the phone call, Mina climbed out her
window and made her way up to her rooftop retreat. It was just
after dark when she pulled out the red notebook. She decided to
look through the Grimoire where her mom wouldn't worry. For Sara,
out of sight, out of mind, really was the best medicine. Mina
reclined in the lounge chair and flipped through the notebook's
pages. Still only one story. She caressed the lines and spoke to
the Grimoire.

“
So there's this dance and
this boy. I really want to go, but I'm scared of what will happen.
Do you think you can help me? I could really use all the help I can
get. Please.”

Mina waited as if for a response, but the
wind chose that moment to pick up and swirl fallen leaves around
the rooftop retreat like mini tornadoes. She dropped the notebook,
and the wind blew the pages closed. Mina felt the hairline crackle
of power crawl over her arms, and she knew that something was
near.

“
I take it that was a no,”
a masculine voice said behind her.

Mina turned and grabbed the Grimoire,
holding it to her chest protectively, until she saw that it was
Jared on the other side of the roof.

“
What are you doing here?”
Mina snapped.

“
I'm surprised you’re
asking the book for help. I thought you had decided to run away.
You certainly seem to be good at it.” Jared walked past Mina,
ignoring her to admire a rosebush growing up a brick
wall.

“
I know that I can't run
forever, but I thought I could at least get away from you. But even
that seems impossible now.” Mina turned her back on Jared, and
began to pick up her jacket and fold it over her arm. She didn't
hear Jared move, but in one second he was next to her, grabbing her
wrist, holding it up to the waning light so he could see a faint
outline of bruising. He lightly rubbed the bruises with his
thumbs.

Mina’s eyes widened, and she jerked her
hands out of his in surprise. A caress from Jared was the last
thing she would have expected. His eyes turned dark, his expression
unreadable. Mina found herself rubbing her own wrists, whether to
rub his touch away or soothe the pain, she wasn’t sure.

“
You can’t run anymore.
It’s too late.” Jared turned his back on her and looked out over
the roofs of the international district, his dark hair blowing
slightly in the wind. “It was almost past the point of no return,
once you stepped into the Babushka's Bakery. The power compelled
you to enter the tale and act. It placed you in the position, and
you chose. It’s too late for you, Wilhelmina Grimm,
great-great-great-granddaughter of Wilhelm Grimm. And you’re going
to need my help.”

Chapter 18

Mina felt as if she was going to faint. “Why
are you here, really?” Jared was really starting to scare her.
“What part do you play in this?”

Jared looked at her, and she could have
sworn that his skin glowed golden for one split second. But after
she blinked her eyes, she decided it was just an illusion from the
setting sun. The sun was covering both of them with a bright, warm
glow.

He closed his eyes as if he was soaking up
the sun and took a deep breath as if it was his first, or his last.
“I am a part of this as much you are and have as much at stake, if
not more.” He sighed and looked at her. “Everything else has a time
and a place, but it is not now, not yet.”

Mina couldn’t understand the change in his
speech, why he was suddenly speaking in riddles. She shook her head
as if to clear her thinking and remembered an earlier statement.
“What tale are you referring to? The notebook only shows the bull
and the stag.”

Jared walked away from Mina back toward the
edge of the roof. She had no choice but to chase after him if she
wanted an answer.

“
Hansel and
Gretel.”

“
But wait, how?” Mina
thought back through the day. “The bakery was the gingerbread
house?”

Jared snorted. “Obviously.”

“
But there wasn’t an old
witch. No one was imprisoned.”

“
There wasn’t? Are you
positive? Think again—no one was held captive?” Jared’s mouth
turned up in challenge, and he actually looked at Mina in
surprise.

“
Well, no, we were all
free to walk around. The boys did seem to act strange when the tour
guide was talking, but…” Mina’s eyes lit up with elation. “Wait,
that’s it. The tour guide didn’t capture anyone, but she did
captivate the boys' attention, and then seemed to settle for Brody
in the end. He was the only one she really cared about. But she
wasn’t a horrible old woman, and she didn’t try to put him in an
oven. She wasn’t going to eat any of the students like in the
story, right?”

“
Not exactly. There is a
word for her kind in your world, I believe?”

“
I don’t understand.” She
turned and picked up a large rock, and held it in her
hands.

“
An older woman who preys
on the attention of younger men. Who uses them, eats them up, and
spits them out. Sound familiar?”

“
A cougar?” Mina asked in
disbelief.

Jared snorted again. “A man-eater.”

“
OH!” Mina replied, still
dumbfounded. She thought back on the young Claire with her red
heels and brightly painted nails, the way she sashayed when she
walked and thrived on the younger male attention. It made
sense.

“
Your teacher was lax in
his duties to watch after you and you entered the factory alone,
the same as the incompetent father in the tale. Then you were
greeted by the hungry female man-eater, who lured boys into her
clutches with her good looks. She’s quite a bit older than she
looks, by the way.”

“
What, thirty?”

“
Older.”

“
Forty?”

“
Try one hundred and
twenty.”

“
How is that possible? I
mean, I saw her, and she didn’t look a day over thirty!”

“
It’s the power of the
tale. This particular fairy tale was set in motion a hundred years
ago, in preparation for you.” Jared turned and stepped closer to
Mina. “Think back—didn’t she seem familiar?”

“
She did seem familiar,
but where have I seen her before? I wouldn’t know anyone one
hundred and twenty years old.”

“
Come on, Mina. You have
to figure this out for yourself. I can’t solve all of the tales for
you. Think hard.”

Mina tried. A picture of a smiling Claire
flashed into her mind, and then Claire’s face after the accident
seared itself into her brain. She was no longer smiling, but
somber, and then Mina knew where she had seen the woman before.
“Mrs. Brimwell, the wife of Larry Brimwell, the founder of the
company.” Mina remembered the unsmiling blonde woman from the
mural.

“
Very good. Anyone else?”
Jared smiled encouragingly.

“
Well, B.J. looks like the
young boy, but there are some slight differences.”

“
That’s because he’s not
the boy from the mural. He is Brimwell Jr. He is, in fact, Claire’s
great-grandson, although he doesn’t know it.”

“
How can that be possible?
How come the boy aged but Claire didn’t?”

“
Because the tale didn’t
need both of them to live forever, just one. The makings for the
Hansel and Gretel tale were all there, so fate used what it had. It
helps that Claire is part Fae and won’t age as long as she
continues to bring boys and girls through the factory. The power of
the tale keeps her young. She literally feeds off the energy of the
youth, especially boys. I told you earlier that Fae feed off human
energy and feelings.”

“
But what happens
now?”

“
Well, you saved Hansel
from being fed to the man-eater by interrupting the tour. Brimwell
Jr. won’t allow any more tours for fear of a lawsuit. You, Mina,
outsmarted the story's old woman, or witch, and completed the
tale.”

“
But doesn’t the story end
with the old woman getting pushed into the oven and burned alive?”
Mina shivered at the thought. “I can’t do that.”

“
Doesn’t have to. As long
as you fulfill certain requirements of the tales, the Story will be
satisfied. The heroine saved the boy and defeated the witch. The
power of that tale has ended. Now the enchantment that kept Claire
young will fade away, and she will age and die. When she dies, the
tale will be complete.”

“
Oh.” Mina was saddened.
Her actions would now cause Claire to die.

“
Relax, Mina, she had
lived a very long and youthful life. It’s time for her to join her
son and husband.”

“
I feel horrible, like
I’ve done something wrong.” Mina clutched her stomach and sat down
on the edge of the roof. It was worse than she imagined. She didn’t
have the stomach to do the task put before her.

“
So do you see why you
can’t run anymore, Mina? Your mother can no longer protect you.
You’ve already completed two of the Grimm tales. Hansel and Gretel
and another, lesser tale when you found the Grimoire.”

“
The Bull and the Stag,”
Mina murmured. “But that didn’t involve anyone dying.” She shook
her head. “Jared, I think I feel sick. You should
leave.”

Jared reached down and helped her back up.
He kept one hand on her arm and led her to the fire escape
steps.

By the time she’d maneuvered the steps to
her window, Mina was so exhausted she didn’t even confront Jared on
how he knew where she lived. She had begun to accept that there
were numerous things about Jared she would never understand, and
she was too tired to care.

She stepped off the last stair and was about
to crawl through the window when she felt her knees go weak. Jared
reached out to steady her. Mina’s legs were numb, and as she moved
away, pinpricks of blood rushed through her lower limbs.

Jared called out to Mina when she’d safely
made it over the sill. “You should keep the Grimoire close to you
at all times.”

She bobbed her head in answer, never once
looking him in the eyes.

“
Be careful. I don’t know
if you realize it, but you’re already in another fairy
tale.”

Mina’s head snapped up to look at him, eyes
wide. “What? Is it that obvious?”

Jared shook his head and muttered the word
“hopeless” under his breath. He pointed to her jackets. “There is a
reason you can’t go out of the house without wearing red hoods and
you keep meeting up with Grey Tail.”

Mina let out a puff of air she didn’t know
she was holding. “I know, Red Riding Hood.”

“
I suspect your clothes
will return to normal after you complete this tale. That is, if you
live through your final encounter with the wolf.”

Jared was serious. He was trying to warn
her, protect her, and prepare her. She was nearly ready to ask for
forgiveness and for his help once more when he shot off one final
parting comment that made her blood run cold.

“
I do think you need to be
careful. Your rooftop isn’t the safest place to cry yourself to
sleep.”

Mina jumped away in alarm. She slammed the
window and pulled the shade closed in frustration. She could hear
Jared laughing from the other side of the glass. When her heart
calmed down and she got her hands to quit shaking, she opened the
window again, and he was gone.

Chapter 19

The next day flew by. There were no strange
storybook appearances by animals, unexplained happenings, or
surprise attacks by wolves. Mina felt she knew why. With the date
of the dance set, she could almost feel the power building,
preparing for the final chapter. She read what she could of Red
Riding Hood but was too scared to touch the Grimoire. Instead, she
kept the Grimoire in her backpack at all times. Every time her
fingers grazed the notebook, it seemed to hum with excitement,
especially the closer it came to the dance. The more it hummed, the
more nervous Mina became, until she began hiding the book and
locking it in a drawer in her room.

Jared barely acknowledged Mina at school but
seemed to always be hovering just on the outskirts, watching,
waiting. He hardly spoke except when spoken to, and his sudden
change in countenance scared off the rest of the students.

Brody soon noticed Jared’s motorcycle
following them in his rearview mirror day after day, which lead to
an altercation after school. Brody and Mina were on the way to his
car, but when they crossed the parking lot, he passed his own
vehicle and walked over to a familiar black motorcycle. Mina saw
the set of his jaw and knew immediately what was going to happen.
She, too, had seen Jared following them everywhere they went.

“Brody, don’t. Let’s just go.”