Page 3 of Looking Grimm

I caught him with a mental loop and dragged him back a staggered step. “Since when are investigators welcome in here?” I hissed.

Nash’s amber-brown eyes fixed onmine. “Since you nearly became one.”

Bristling, I released him and faced the older man watching me with the most pleasant expression his sharp, sternly-wrinkled features could manage.

Despite Briggs’s apparently good humor, I found myself immediately suspicious. Had Maximus or Holland sent him here? It would be quite the knife to bury in my back: ordering my arrest at the hands of my father’s old partner. And Briggs had always been a company man, I didn’t doubt he would follow a command once given, even if it pained him.

I walked forward, sober enough to keep a straight line and upright posture as I came up to the line of barstools where Willem Briggs stood, offering a handshake.

“Fitch.” His smile eased my mounting anxiety. Clasping my hand in his, he pulled me against his chest for a back-thumping hug.

I remained rigid, suspicious, and self-conscious about my disheveled appearance. My bathroom sink brush-up had done little to mask the days since my last shower and the liquor already on my breath.

When he released me, I pulled back, fussing in vain over my baggy, borrowed clothes.

He didn’t immediately speak, so I found myself filling the silence. “How’d you find me?”

Briggs sat on a leather-topped stool, then gestured for me to do the same. “I’m an investigator, Fitch,” he replied. “It’s my job. And it helps that you drive a flashy car.”

I thought of the Porsche 911 in the gravel lot out front, its trunk stained with blood from hauling Donovan’s corpse across town. Nash had offered to clean it for me, but I couldn’t get my head around the idea of wiping away the lastremnants of my brother, gruesome though they were.

Down the bar, Nash had given up mopping and pushed through the double doors to the back side of the counter. I watched him with suspicion as he retrieved a notepad and pen from his apron pocket and began writing.

Briggs continued, “Though I will say being an investigator hasn’t done me much good getting information about you, or why you simply disappeared a few weeks ago. I must admit, I feared the worst.”

“Thought I died?” I mused bitterly.

He chewed on his thin bottom lip. “Actually, I feared you’d been enticed back into the ranks of the Bloody Hex.”

So, I was better off dead than a criminal. That was the Briggs I knew, all right.

My apathetic expression prompted him to explain. “Change can be hard, and this level of reform must feel impossible some days.”

I wanted to laugh. Sure, I wasn’t murdering people by the dozens, but I’d hardly cleaned up my act. Donovan’s death had turned me into a rage-fueled alcoholic camping out in Nash’s bedroom. Not because we were dating, or even fucking lately, but because I’d quite literally set fire to everything else in my life. I had nothing and no one else.

I found myself watching Nash again as he took inventory of the shelves of bottles that emptied much more slowly than they used to. His business had yet to recover from the loss of the gang’s patronage. I was beginning to fear it never would.

Briggs prattled on, and I tuned back in as he said, “I even asked Maximus about the plan to make you an investigator, but he pretended not to know what I was talking about.Strange times.”

Probably because Maximus had been stowed away in the Bitters’ End cellar while Grimm was playing house in illusion. Maximus had no plans to make me an investigator. He’d said so himself. There were “too many chinks in my armor,” which was a tactful way of saying I was damaged beyond repair.

Nash made his way toward us, but his notetaking had stopped during the lengthy pause. When he hovered too long with the pen poised about the lined pad, I snapped my fingers at him.

“Mind your damn business, barkeep. I see you snooping.”

Nash’s bearded cheeks flushed. He clicked the pen and tucked it behind his ear before stalking off to the end of the counter, as far as he could get from us.

On the stool beside me, Briggs observed Nash’s hasty departure. “You know, I spoke to him a bit before you came down,” Briggs said. “He seems concerned about you. Is he a friend of yours?”

“Probably wishing he wasn’t about now,” I said in the same low voice.

Nash’s concern had given out after the first week or so, which he’d spent begging me to eat, then sitting on the bathroom floor with me when I drank my meals instead, only to puke them up into the toilet in the wee hours of the night. He made sure I showered, sobered me up, then repeated the cycle… until he stopped.

He still held me in bed and stayed nearby anytime he caught me crying but had otherwise given me space. I didn’t remember asking for his absence but, in many ways, Isupposed I’d demanded it. I pushed, hoping he would push back, but every step felt like it was driving him down until he was pinned under my feet, below me when I wanted him beside me.

Guilt was a feeling I didn’t have room for, so I pushed it aside and shook myself before facing Briggs again.

“Listen,” I cleared my throat. “I appreciate you coming out here. I would also appreciate it if you didn’t tell anybody about this. Flashy car or no, I’m trying to lay low.”

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