"I'm sure you'll agree he's just a prince of a guy," Nottingham added, and the crowd erupted into laughter.
And then Prince William Charming stepped to the front of the crowd and stood between Mayor Heart and Nottingham. His shirt was marked with a bloodred handprint.
To be continued in
THE SISTERS GRIMM
BOOK SIX TALES FROM THE HOOD
About the author
Michael Buckley is the
New York Times bestselling author of the
Sisters Grimm series. He has also written and developed television shows for many networks.
The Mole People and
The New Sideshow can be seen regularly on the Discovery Channel. Michael and his wife live in New York City.
This book was designed by Jay Colvin and Vivian Cheng, and art directed by Chad W. Beckerman. It is set in Adobe Garamond, a typeface that is based on those created in the sixteenth century by Claude Garamond. Garamond modeled his typefaces on those created by Venetian printers at the end of the fifteenth century. The modern version used in this book was designed by Robert Slimbach, who studied Garamond's historic typefaces at the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, Belgium.
The capital letters at the beginning of each chapter are set in Daylilies, designed by Judith Sutcliffe. She created the typeface by decorating Goudy Old Style capitals with lilies.
Enjoy this sneak peek at
TALES FROM THE HOOD
BOOK SIX IN THE
SISTERS GRIMM
SERIES
*
Sabrina washed her face and was about to shut off the light and go back to bed when she heard something bubbling in the toilet. The lid was down and she couldn't see what was causing the noise, but she had her suspicions. Before Puck moved in with the family, he had lived in the woods for a decade. So modern conveniences mesmerized him--none more so than the toilet. He loved to flush it over and over and watch the water swirl down the hole and disappear. For months he was convinced that toilets were some kind of magic, until Uncle Jake explained how indoor plumbing worked. Unfortunately, this knowledge only increased Puck's interest, and it wasn't long before he was conducting what he called "scientific research" to discover what could be flushed down the tubes. It started out with a little loose change, but the items quickly grew in size: marbles, wristwatches, doorknobs, balls of yarn, even scoops of butter pecan ice cream swirled and disappeared. Granny finally put an end to it all when she caught Puck trying to flush a beaver he had trapped by the river. Ever since, the toilet had been coughing up Puck's "experiments." Last week Sabrina found one of her mittens inside. Now, apparently, something else was making its way to the surface. She bent down and lifted the lid, hoping it was the missing television remote control, which had vanished months ago.
But it wasn't the remote control. Instead it was something so shocking she would have nightmares about it the rest of her life and an unnatural fear of toilets in general. Who would expect to lift the toilet lid and find a little man sitting inside?
"Who goes there?" he said in a squeaky voice. He was no more than a foot tall and wore a tiny green suit, a green bowler hat, and shiny black shoes with bright brass buckles. His long red beard dipped into the toilet water.
Sabrina shrieked and slammed the toilet lid down on the creature's head. The little man groaned and shouted a few angry curses, but Sabrina didn't stick around to hear them. She was already running down the hallway, screaming for her grandmother.
Granny Relda stumbled out of her room. She was wearing an ankle-length nightgown and a sleeping cap that hid her gray hair. She looked the picture of the perfect grandmother, except, of course, for the sharpened battle-ax she held in her hand.
"Liebling!"
her grandmother cried in a light German accent.
Liebling was the German word for sweetheart.
"What is going on?
"There's a person in the toilet!" Sabrina said. "A what?"
Before she could answer, Uncle Jake came out of a room at the end of the hall. He was fully dressed in jeans, leather boots, and a long overcoat with hundreds of little pockets sewn into it. He looked exhausted and in dire need of a shave. "What's all the hubbub about?"
"Sabrina says she saw something in the toilet," Granny Relda explained.
"I swear I flushed," Uncle Jake said as he threw up his hands.
"Not that! A person!" Sabrina shouted. "He spoke to me."
"Mom, you've really got to cut back on all the spicy food you've been feeding the girls," Uncle Jake said. "It's giving them bad dreams."
"It wasn't a dream!" Sabrina cried.
Daphne entered the hallway, dragging her blanket behind her. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes with her free hand and looked around grumpily. "Can't a person get some shut-eye around here?"
"Sabrina had a bad dream," Granny Relda explained.
"I did not!"
"She says she saw something in the toilet," Uncle Jake said. "I swear I flushed," Daphne said.