UnEnchanted (An Unfortunate Fairy Tale #1)(50)

Jared watched Brody hurry into the school, not even sparing him a backward glance as he rushed to meet a worried Mina. Jared smiled to himself. Brody scored himself a point in his own book.

Jared picked up his bike ignoring the cash that was blowing away in the wind, and looked at the damage done to his ride. Shaking his head Jared rubbed his hands over the dents and with a glow of power they began to fill themselves back out. The scratches glowed and began to spiral out erasing themselves leaving no trace of damage.

A roar of a motorcycle engine coming to life made Jared's head snap up in the direction of the street. A man dressed in black with a bike helmet was sitting on a motorcycle watching him.

Jared could feel the trickle of cold sweat slide down his back as he recognized the scent but couldn't place the name of the wolf. He could feel the Fae's inhuman growl underneath the vibration of the motorcycle; calling him, challenging him. He watched as the black reflective helmet nodded at him before tearing off down the road, leaving a trail of burned rubber following him.

Jared knew time was running short. The pack was gathering.





Chapter 21


Jared made himself scarce. He didn’t attend classes the rest of the week. It was as if he too, could feel what was coming. When Mina did see him, he always seemed to be walking a fine line between barely controlling his anger and being completely aloof.

Surprisingly he appeared Thursday during lunch. He slid onto the bench next to Nan, ignoring Mina as he asked her best friend Nan Taylor to the dance.

Mina waited for him to look at her, to glance her way, acknowledge her with a self-satisfied smirk or even a frown. She needed confirmation from Jared that she wasn't in this alone, that he had her back or was there to help her. She waited for Jared to bait her with a snide comment or joke. He didn't.

When Nan accepted his offer to go to the dance, Jared squeezed her hand and told her he would call her. He exited the table as silently as he appeared, without a backward glance at Mina.

Mina was crushed. She felt utterly lost and a sense of foreboding hopelessness consumed her. Without Jared's help Mina knew she couldn't finish the tale. Brody's weight on the bench snapped Mina out of her depression.

“What's going on?” he asked Nan.

Nan positively glowed with excitement and told Brody about her date. Brody's smile turned into a frown as Nan spent the rest of her lunch hour talking about dress ideas and costumes.





Chapter 22


When Mina told her mother about the dance theme, Sara wisely didn’t say anything but gave her daughter a wary look. She had even helped pick out Mina’s costume. The costume shop was dimly lit, cramped and smelled like a cross between a school locker room and sterilizer.

“It smells like old people.” she whispered to her mom, wrinkling her nose in distaste.

Sara tried not to laugh. “It’s the moth balls honey. There are a lot of old clothes here. They are vintage after all.”

Mina did her best to put on a smile. To Sara, vintage means cheaper than the mall and one step up from a thrift store. Mina tried to look enthusiastic when a sales lady greeted them. She hoped the dresses didn’t smell like the store, but with her luck they probably would. But her mom was a queen at cleaning, so hopefully she would be able to air it out.

Just for fun, Mina had tried on various renaissance gowns and princess costumes, probably castoffs from a school play or theater, but every costume had the same problem: it didn’t fit with what the Story wanted. It seemed as if the Story was controlling even Mina's dance attire. Every dress had a fault or wouldn't fit.

“This would be a great Cinderella gown.” Sara grunted as she pulled and fumbled with zipper. “It must be caught on something.” Sara tried and tried but could not get the zipper to cooperate. Even when Mina explained that the Story wouldn’t let her go as another character other than Red Riding Hood, Sara seemed determined to try and change the story’s mind.

“Try this one instead.” Sara held up a sapphire blue dress with delicate long sleeve. “You could be sleeping beauty. That tale doesn’t have any wolves.” She smiled hopefully but Mina detected the stress that was ticking under her mother’s left eye. When the dress refused to budge and zip up, Sara was awash in tears of frustration. A store seamstress, Molly, came over and tried to help, but neither one could get the zipper to work.

“That is so strange.” The seamstress commented wryly. She fumbled with the zipper and could find no cloth or string hindering the teeth. She tried a different dress and tested the zipper before asking Mina to step into it. “Let’s try a larger dress.”

Mina rolled her eyes and stepped into the next size up and blew her bangs out of her eyes. She was exhausted from trying on dresses. Yes, she did have her heart set on the blue Cinderella gown but she knew better than to get her hopes up.

“It’s stuck!” Molly gasped out. She tugged and tugged on the zipper that had worked perfectly only minutes ago. “I don’t know what to tell you. I was sure that it would work.” She was flustered and didn’t know how to appease Sara who was by now moved to tears of frustration.

“Oh, my poor girl!” Sara cried and blew her nose on a tissue from her purse. She knew what the signs meant as well as Mina. Sara wept because she didn’t want her daughter to have to face a wolf anymore then Mina did.