Fable (An Unfortunate Fairy Tale 3)

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.”