“Yes and no,” she replied grudgingly. “Can a Fae ever say anything outright without hiding it behind innuendos and half-truths? Sometimes I’m not even sure I should trust him.”
“You’re absolutely right—you can’t fully trust him. But never mind that for now. The Grimoire came to you. You have an even bigger chance of beating this because you have figured out the Grimoire’s secret. You’re stronger than the rest.”
Mina had to close her eyes and calm her heart and listen to them. She came here for help. She was probably the first mortal to ever step foot in the GM’s headquarters.
“Okay, tell me about the Grimm curse, from your side.”
Constance leaned forward and let her hands rest on the table in front of her. “Well, you already know that the Story prefers males. We believe this is because he thinks they’re the stronger adversary. And the Story tends to choose the next Grimm from the closest living male relative, which is why it went from your grandfather to your uncle to your father. After your father died, the Story would have to pick another male Grimm, so Sara thought it would go after some distant second or third cousin, and that you two would be free from the curse. But you know as well as I that a few weeks after your father’s funeral, your mother found out that she was pregnant.
“Sara was extremely frightened and worried, and told Terry all of her worst fears of it being a boy, and the curse never leaving her family alone. Terry, using magic, was able to determine the sex of her unborn child. When your mother learned that she was carrying the next boy Grimm, she became hysterical, refusing to eat, sleep, and work. Finally, Terry, tired of watching and being unable to help her charge, begged us to intercede, and we did. We did something we promised we never would do. We intervened on an unborn Grimm. We cast a spell to make him invisible to the Story, to make the Story look elsewhere for his next Grimm.”
“That’s why Charlie is the way he is?” Mina gasped, and started to cry in relief. “I knew he was special, I knew he…” she sobbed, and Mei came over and hugged Mina and let her cry out all of her worries and frustrations.
“Yes, it is our fault that Charlie is different. He is harmless and of no interest to the Story, but the Story knew he had been duped. He always came back year after year to see if there had been a change. To see what had happened to his next Grimm. I think that is when he became interested in you, Mina,” Constance said sadly.
Mei joined in excitedly. “He kept testing you when you were growing up, and your mom saw it and became frightened, and moved a lot. But I knew. I knew it would choose you.”
“What about the house?” Mina asked.
“What about it?” Constance didn’t seem worried.
“Where did that come from?”
“It’s the same house the Grimm Brothers lived in hundreds of years ago. It’s been invisible, hidden for years until the next Grimm needed it. We had to gather enough fairies and convince them to use a fairy circle to move it here, and each time it’s moved it changes a little to fit the new surroundings. Your grandfather lived there, but your father just used it as his office. He refused to move your family there. He wanted to try to keep as normal a life as possible. And now it belongs to you.”
Mina meditated on what she’d just been told. She had a house that was protected from Fae, a whole Guild of Godmothers that were of no help to her because they wouldn’t fight, and a blank spot on their wall for when she died.
“What about the Grimoire? How did Jared and Teague get involved with the quests that originally started out between the Fates and the Grimm Brothers? Jared already told me that a sprite split the Fae book in two, creating the original Story and its doppelganger, the Grimoire, and that one is evil, the other good. But how do Jared and Teague fit in? When did they become so…attached?” Mina couldn’t help but smile at her own joke.