Read The Grimm Chronicles, Vol. 2 for Free Online Page A

do you want?” I asked, unwilling to sit back in the comfortable seat. Beside me, Briar sipped his soda, clutching the can with both paws.
    Sam crossed his legs. Between us was a small circular table cluttered with documents. He sighed, tapping on the documents a few times. “Away with the pleasantries, then. I have a tip for you.”
    “A tip?” I glanced at Briar. His long ears perked up, bumping into the ceiling of the limo and folding over.
    Sam nodded. “There is a … property that I have an intense desire to own. A mansion located downtown.”
    “I thought you had Edward’s mansion.”
    “No, young lady.” He rolled his dark eyes. “I sold that mansion as soon as I removed the skeletons. That money is sitting in my bank where it belongs. I want this new mansion to live in. But as of right now, it’s officially an orphanage.”
    “Oh, so you just want me to kick some orphans out on the street,” I grumbled. “Great. That sounds like a ton of fun, Mr. Grayle. When I’m done, are there any puppies you’d like me to kill?”
    He sighed. “This particular mansion is the very reason I moved Grayle Incorporated to Milwaukee in the first place. I’ve had my eye on it for nearly two decades, but its owner is a fickle one. To put it bluntly, she’s a wrinkled old prune. A dangerous one at that.”
    Briar smacked his lips together. “Rather rude of you not to offer us something to eat.”
    Sam waved a hand to the little pullout wooden drawer under our seat. Briar reached in, grabbing a handful of expensive-looking individually wrapped crackers with the product name written in glossy silver letters. A pile of crumbs quickly gathered in his lap.
    “As I was saying,” the Corrupted dwarf continued, “I’ve been spending a good portion of my free time digging into the personal life of the old hag who runs the orphanage. It would be political suicide to publicly go after such a well-intentioned institution, so I thought perhaps a little blackmail would work better.”
    “Classic Corrupted,” Briar scoffed. A mouthful of crumbs exited his mouth in the process.
    Sam ignored him. “But I found little, if anything, on the woman’s history. I realized then and there that I was searching for the wrong information.” He reached out and grabbed one of the pieces of paper sitting on the table. He handed it to me.
    “ The Juniper-Tree ,” I read. The next words were familiar enough: “By the Brothers Grimm.”
    “I take it you can check your copy and see if any of the characters in this particular story have already been … ah, eliminated , so to speak.” He saw the surprised look on my face and frowned. “Oh come now. Of course I know about the book with the names crossed out. Do you think me a fool?”
    “No,” I grumbled. I stared at the piece of paper. It was just one page of the story, but it was familiar enough: a horrible stepmother kills her husband’s first son, and of course chaos ensues. “Who do you think it is from this story?”
    “No doubt the stepmother,” Sam said. “From what I know about the head of the orphanage,” he checked another piece of paper on the table, “Ms. Gwyneth York bears a striking resemblance to the stepmothers of the Grimms’ fairy tales: stern, cold, authoritative.”
    I smiled. “So you could potentially be one as well?”
    Briar coughed out bits of cracker, chuckling.
    Sam Grayle’s face darkened. “Laugh it up, furball.”
    I looked down at the paper again. “But the stepmother dies at the end. She’s crushed by a stone.”
    “Ah, not quite,” Sam said with a raised finger. “She disappears, but she doesn’t die. I know this for a fact because I happened upon her in the year 1845. Back then, I was still mining for gold anywhere I could. The stepmother, who’d taken the name Fran Merkel, was hiring miners to dig into a pit.”
    “Curious,” Briar said, narrowing one eye. “Why a pit?”
    Sam shook his head. “It was never specified. But she was