“You’re all disappointments. Failures. Making promises you cannot keep. You deserve your fate. Every single one of you,” she yelled into the night before walking to the edge of the marshy creek. Once she’d stepped onto the embankment her glamour faded, and she was fully human again. She collapsed to the ground and began to sob miserably.
The wind picked up, and the tree’s branches blew. A whispering moan filled the air. Kathleen and Mina didn’t hear the ethereal words whispered into the night, but Jared did. And he shivered in understanding as the Fae warning raked through his very core.
This is not her tale to finish, but yours.
Chapter 2
“We need to do something!” Mina demanded. “We should have gone back there and captured her in the Grimoire.” She yanked on the ends of her jacket in frustration.
He sighed and shifted gears in the car as he sped toward the international district to take Mina home. Good thing Mina just used the word should and didn’t command him to go back. There was only so much he could do to indirectly disobey her since she had the Grimoire. If she figured out just how linked they actually were, then there would be no end to her demands. He would be stuck saving every lost kitten, dog, and—in this case—frog.
No, it was better that she never learned this particular secret. Mina needed to believe simply that he was a Fae and that he was there to guide her—sort of—some of the time—when he felt like it.
“You just can’t go charging in declaring war on every Fae you don’t like and trapping them in the book. I hate to use this pun in the situation, Mina, but you really need to look before you leap.”
“I have to stop her. That’s my quest. It’s the frog prince tale. I’m sure of it.”
“But how are you going to stop her? You could have captured her right there and—boom!—quest over.”
She turned and gave him an ugly glare. “I would have, if you hadn’t shown up on my personal stake-out and interfered. Which leads me to my next question. Why in the world did you show up in the middle of the woods?”
He gripped the steering wheel and took the right on to Main Street a little too fast. Mina clutched the door handle until her knuckles turned white. He felt a little bad and released pressure off of the gas pedal, but not much.
“You saw what she became. You saw what she did to…to…that young man!” Mina pleaded at him with her big brown eyes. Gosh, she didn’t know what those pleading eyes did to him. It made him feel weak, and he hated being weak.
“So what! Did you even ask yourself if maybe he did something bad and deserved being turned into a toad?” Jared spat out harshly. A knee-jerk reaction to the way she was making him feel internally.
Mina blinked, taken aback by his harsh tone. “No, that never crossed my mind at all, because she was the one that was the walking-talking toad monster. Not Tom.”
“So now it’s Tom, is it?” he grit his teeth in anger and actually missed the turn for her apartment. After a quick U-turn, he pulled in front of the Golden Palace Chinese Restaurant and checked to see if he could see Mrs. Wong inside. Nope, the restaurant was as dark and abandoned as the rest of the street. He was free from running into the annoying woman.
“Mina, I think you need to keep a low profile for this quest. Let it be.” The words sounded hollow even to him. Weak and without reason.
“Are you dumb, Jared? That Fae is turning boys into frogs! She’s worse than Claire and her thirst for young men. At least, she didn’t turn Brody into a frog!”
“You’re just upset because of how that particular tale ended in response to your love life. Get over it Mina. Life isn’t a bed of roses. These tales don’t have happy endings. What makes you think that because you are a Grimm, you’re exempt? Because you’re not.” The spiteful words flew out of his mouth before he could stop them, though he didn’t intend to hurt her.
It drove him crazy how hung up she was on Brody. She needed to snap out of it, because Brody was a real weakness. If the Story ever saw how much she cared for him, then he would be a target. It was the same thing with her best friend Nan. It would be better if she got rid of all of her friends until this was over. It would be safer. For all of them.
Mina blinked quickly and looked away from him. Her body stiffened, and he could tell that she was holding back tears. He hated these human emotions of hers, at times like this. Too bad she couldn’t be more Fae like.
Jared unbuckled his seatbelt and turned, facing her. “Get used to the disappointment and failure because sooner or later, you will fail at the Story’s quest. Where will that leave you? Or Charlie?”