A Grimm Legacy (Grimm Tales) (32 page)

Mr. Jackson began pacing along an aisle of books. It was disconcerting for Fredrick to see one of his nervous habits on someone else.

“She came up with a plan, determined to take as many people with her as she could. Quietly, she began by sending out feelers, asking around to see who else was unhappy, who else would be willing to change their lives. Rapunzel was miserable with her prince as well, so she was an obvious choice. I heard about Cynthia’s plans from my mother who worked as a cook in the castle when I was young. She used to buy fish at the local market, which is where she knew your grandfather from, Dylan. By the time everything was in place, we had four in total,” Mr. Jackson said.

"You decided to just leave? I thought Elorians didn't have a will of their own?" Fredrick asked.

"It’s not that simple," Mr. Jackson wouldn’t quite meet his eyes.

"But you knew about our world from the book,
” Quinn said.

"No," Mr. Jackson shook his head. "I had no idea about the fairy tales until I stumbled across a copy of it in your world. Apparently, Cynthia did as well. We knew another world beside ours existed because Cynthia
had seen the queen's magic mirror. Wilhelm is terrible at keeping secrets—”

“
He managed to keep a pretty big one from
me
,” Andi interrupted.

“
Cynthia's mother gave her the shoes as a way to not only see into the mirror, but pass through it as well. We met at the appointed time and broke into the castle. We almost didn't make it. Your grandfather," Mr. Jackson nodded at Dylan, "could not bear to leave his wife behind and tried to convince her to come. She raised the alarm instead and your grandfather ran, taking his infant son with him. "

"How did you get back here?" Fredrick asked, as if afraid of the answer.

Mr. Jackson opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again with a frustrated look.

“
You owe me a few answers, and we’re about out of time,” Fredrick pushed him.

“
I panicked!” Mr. Jackson rested his head in his hands and was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke again, his tormented words were difficult to listen to. "I thought my family would be better off without me. I ran back to this place.” He picked his head up from his hands and looked around the room, but his eyes were haunted and distant. “Here I’m both tormented and liberated. Not having to make decisions—when they’re difficult ones—can be a tempting thing. In Elorium, I had no responsibilities, no worries. It was, obviously, a mistake.”

His eyes found Fredrick
’s. They didn’t plead or make excuses—they looked tortured. Fredrick tried to hide his look of shock and anguish, but knew he wasn’t completely erasing the emotion from his face. His grandfather had abandoned his family.

Torn between pity and revulsion, he avoided Jack
’s gaze, pulling out the ring that had made up the center of the strange purple flower and worried it in his hands.

“
Do you know what it did to Dad when you left?” Fredrick spoke in a calm, tight voice, still not meeting his eyes. “Do you know how much we’ve needed you this past year?”

“
I regretted it,” Mr. Jackson said matter-of-factly. “Immediately I regretted it. I tried to get back, but I couldn’t figure out how without Cynthia’s shoes. I even tried calling to warn you. The cell phones here are spotty at the best of times, and I didn’t even know if it was possible to call another world—
”
Jack said.

“
It was you!” Andi shouted, remembering the strange phone call she’d gotten on the roof. “I got a weird call the day I disappeared!”

“
Wait, we could have called our parents?” Quinn asked, looking floored. “Why didn’t we?”

“
What exactly would have told them?” Andi pointed out. “Hey Dad, got sucked into a fairy tale world, be back as soon as I can?”

“
You may have a point,” Quinn conceded.

"I was accepting of my punishment, to mindlessly follow another
’s orders for eternity.” What remained of Mr. Jackson was a shell, a leftover husk of a man eaten away by guilt for half a century. “Then Herrchen ordered me to bring you to him. And when you showed up on my doorstep, it was the worst and best day of my life." He moved as though to take Fredrick’s hands in his, but his eyes fell to the ring Fredrick turned around in his fingers. His drawn face turned a pasty white as he whispered, "Where’d you get that?"

"Ummm... we were just looking for the bathroom?"

Andi hadn
’t realized he’d kept the ring. She plucked it from Fredrick’s hand and balanced the circle of gold between two fingers so that it caught the morning light.

“
What, this?"

"It's the center of the flower I used to free Quinn from the fairy,
” Fredrick said. “The rest of it disintegrated, but this was left behind."

"I didn't realize..." Mr. Jackson got an urgent look on his face as voices echoed in the hall. "Do any of you know wher
e the queen's magic mirror is?"

Andi shrugged, but Dylan raised his hand like a reluctant student. "I know which corridor to go down. I was right outside of it when I got jumped
."

"Hold hands." Mr. Jackson grabbed the ring from Andi, ignoring her protests and shoved it into Dylan's good hand. "It
’s a wishing ring! One person gets one wish. It won’t take you home, but it’ll take you to the mirror."

The door swung inward. He vaulted across the room and rammed his body into the door, slamming it back shut. The howl from outside said he caught someone's fingers in the door. Andi stood numb, frozen to her spot
.

"Move!" Mr. Jackson screamed, leaning all his weight into the bucking door. Andi leapt to the desk, retrieving her bag from the floor. Dylan stared at the ring, a doubtful expression on his face. Quinn hung on to his good hand and grabbed an alarmed Fredrick with the other as he tried to cross the room to his grandfather.

“Let go, Quinn!” He wrench his arm, but Quinn held on to him as Andi reached them, joining their chain.

Mr. Jackson flew backward
as Herrchen barreled through the door, three fingers of his right hand swollen and bent at painful angles.

Dylan gabbled,
“I wish we were outside the queen’s corridor!”

The room blurred, colors bleeding into one another until Andi got nauseated and closed her eyes. The ground under her feet was firm, but the air whipped around her like she was traveling at high speeds. Opening her eyes once, a barrage of images forced her to shut them immediately. The wind stilled and the texture of the ground was different
—wood floors instead of carpet. Andi tentatively cracked one eye open and found a pair of guards giving them baffled looks from their posts at the end of the corridor.

"Ummm... we were just looking f
or the bathrooms?" Dylan tried.

The guards got over their shock quickly and reached for the guns belted to their hips. Andi had her cloak halfway out of her bag by the time the faster guard had his gun out of its holster and leveled at them. Fredrick, only feet from the guard now, tackled him, and together they slammed to the ground.

The gun fired.

A bullet whistled past Dylan
’s ear, jolting him out of his frozen position. He stumbled after Quinn, who had reached the slower moving guard. She put her full weight behind her knee and brought it up between his legs while he was still fumbling his gun out of its holster. He let out a strangled gasp and crumpled to the floor, both hands grasping his injured body parts and moaning as he rocked back and forth. Dylan swept the gun into his hands, cradling it awkwardly.

Andi pulled up her hood and vanished. Fredrick and the guard continued to roll around on the floor with the gun grasped between them.

The rifle fired again with a drawn out pop that echoed down the corridor. The bullet narrowly missed Andi, who had been trying to keep out of the way of Fredrick’s flailing limbs. She knelt on the guard’s windpipe and leaned all her weight into it.

The guard dropped his gun with a clatter on the hardwood floor and scrabbled at his neck, his eyes bulging. She fought to keep her balance as he pitched and rolled, trying to unseat his invisible assailant.

Fredrick backed away, clutching the gun to his chest. The gurgling noises that bubbled from the guard’s lips were alarming. His feet drummed the floor and Andi shook off her hood.

"You can get off him now." Fredrick leveled the small rifle at the gasping guard as Andi stood. Noises were coming up the long staircase at the end of the hall
.

"You
’re bleeding!" Quinn said, watching the blood stream down Dylan’s leg and pool on the floor.

"Huh." Dylan looked at his leg like it wasn
't attached. "It doesn't hurt."

Quinn knelt and widened the rip in his pants leg with a quick yank on the torn fabric.

"It's going to. A bullet’s grazed your leg,” she said dryly. “You couldn’t wish us to the
mirror
?”

“
Sorry,” Dylan said, making it sound like a question. He shrugged apologetically, offering Andi a lopsided smile as Quinn fussed with his leg. She wanted to reach out and grab his hand again, to offer a comforting squeeze.

"We have to go," Fredrick said, the thudding feet gro
wing closer. "Which room is the mirror in?"

"I don't know." Dylan
’s face turned white and he winced as Quinn finished the knot on the makeshift bandage from the sash of her dress.

"Guys take the right, girls on the left,
” Andi instructed.

She flew down the hall, flinging doors open and leapfrogging past Quinn as they searched for the mirror. The boys staggered after them, nursing wrists, legs, and ribs.

"What does it look like?” Dylan yelled as he stumbled by.

"No idea, but it's gotta
be big enough to walk through."

Andi
, cloak streaming, slammed the door on a private study and ran by Quinn. The light was dim behind the next door and Andi stole into the room, looking for a switch to flip on. An oil lamp glowed on a low table next to the door, and she turned up the wick. The light didn't reach far, but through another door farther into the room, a glint caught her eye.

“
Guys”—she stuck her head back into the hall—"in here." The first of the guards rounded the corner of the corridor. "Hurry!"

The others piled in the room behind her and locked the door. She rushed across the room, the lamp creating a pool of light around her as she prodded open the door to a dressing room that put her closet at home to shame. A noise in the corner of the room made her turn back. A woman sat up in bed with a sleep masked shoved back on top of her disheveled hair. The queen. Andi was impressed she could still look so exquisite with such a furious look.

Her face quickly lost all its blood and she felt the strangest urge to curtsey.

"Your Majesty!"

"Guards!” the queen shrieked.

Quinn shoved the boys into the dressing room, tugging Andi after them and sh
ut the door. "There's no lock!"

Andi barely heard her as she approached the mirror slowly. Gilded in tarnished silver, the oval six-foot monstrosity hung suspended in the middle of the room. She made a trip around, looking for what supported it.

"How’s it doing that?" Fredrick asked.

Andi faced her reflection, eerie in the lamplight, and tentatively touched the smooth surface. A clear tone rang out and the surface turned milky white.

"Tell me glass, tell me true," Andi whispered the words Quinn passed on from her grandmother’s book.

Floating out of the white was a
face with hair that blended into the background and ageless eyes that smiled out at them.

"It's a woman,
” Fredrick said. A bell-like laugh rang throughout the room. As it faded, the queen’s screaming stopped and they could hear the lock turn on her bedroom door.

"Candide." The
mirror woman's voice was low and musical. "I wondered when I would see you. I know you must get tired of hearing it, but you look remarkably like your grandmother."

Andi couldn
’t smile back. "Please, can you get us home?"

The doorknob to the closet door rattled. Quinn threw herself on it and the boys added their weight to the door.

"I can. Do you have the shoes?" Andi held them up from where they hung on her fingers. "Place them on your feet. Make sure you’re touching anyone who wants to pass through." Andi kicked off her boots, peeled off her socks, and stepped into the low heels. A shiver ran down her spine.

The door bucked under the onslaught of guards and Fredrick asked, "Andi?"

The woman in the mirror disappeared. In her place was the image of a dusty shop containing heavy furniture covered in miniature figurines, delicately painted china, rusty watering cans, and an assortment of tarnished silverware. Hundreds of cuckoo clocks dominated one wall, and indistinct mounds of clothing, furs, and wide brimmed hats balanced haphazardly on coat racks by the front door. A sliver of window revealed only pine trees and fog. Nothing looked familiar.