“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 spoke 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 rose bush 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. 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 she 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 of 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.”