Fable: An Unfortunate Fairy Tale Book 3 (11 page)

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.