Fable: An Unfortunate Fairy Tale Book 3 by Chanda Hahn Page A

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.”
    “ No, it wasn’t!” a short
red-haired woman interjected. “I saw it—he had those popping
firework things.”
    “ Are you dumb? It was a
government conspiracy. A soldier came in with experimental strobe
lights, and he was trying to hypnotize us. He was going to make us
his slaves,” a man in a white tank top and NASCAR hat
said.
    “ It wasn’t a guy—it was a
girl, and she was flying.” It was the large man from earlier, still
slurping on his drink. “And I was turned to copper, but I’m all
better now!”
    “ Are you on drugs? There
was no girl, it was a group of boys, and they were lighting things
on fire. I saw it and jumped up and pulled the fire
alarm.”
    “ No, I saw someone in the
projector room. They let off a smoke bomb,” an irritated teenager
interrupted.
    “ I think it was a breaker.
An employee messed with the circuit breakers,” someone else yelled
out.
    Slowly the truth was covered up by so many
lies that no one could determine what had actually happened.
Finally, the policeman shook his head and walked away, no closer to
the truth.
    Jared stood up and let out a deep breath.
Relieved.
    “ I take it you’re used to
this?” she asked.
    “ Yeah, but you never know
whether or not it will clean up after itself.”
    “ You mean your brother,”
she asked.
    He nodded. “Can I see the Grimoire real
quick?” She handed him the book, and he flipped to the end and took
a look at