The Grimm Legacy by Polly Shulman Read Free Book Online Page A

bunching up into balls. “It’s not that kind of sweeping. Ask a page to show you. Marc or Aaron. Gumdrop?”
    “What?” Was this a new endearment—had she gotten tired of “honey”?
    “Gumdrop?” She held out a bag.
    “Oh, thanks.” I took a green one and rode the elevator down, chewing.
    When I got to Stack 2, Aaron was at his usual desk, reading; Marc was nowhere in sight.
    “Hi, Aaron. Where’s Marc?”
    “Downstairs, why?”
    “Ms. Callender said one of you should show me how to sweep the shelves.”
    Aaron looked irritated. “And you’d prefer Merritt, is that it?”
    “No, I just—he came down the stairs ahead of me; I thought he’d be here.”
    “Great. Another member of the Marc Merritt fan club.”
    “No . . . well, of course I think he’s cool and all, but I’m not actually in the fan club,” I said.
    Aaron gave me a look that, in other lighting, would probably have suggested that he couldn’t believe he was stuck on Stack 2 with such an idiot. Under the desk lamp’s dramatic highlights and shadows, though, it suggested that he was an ogre about to eat me.
    “I mean,” I explained, “most of the kids in the fan club are a lot younger.”
    The highlights and shadows shifted. Now he looked like an ogre who was going to choke up the idiot he had eaten.
    “Some of their little sisters are in it too,” I said.
    “You can’t be serious! You mean there’s an actual Marc Merritt fan club?” he said.
    I was starting to get irritated myself. “Of course there is. I’m sure you could join, since you take such an interest. All those girls would probably enjoy having an older guy around, even if it’s just you.”
    Aaron stood up and said coldly, “Sweeping the shelves means making sure there’s nothing out of place. Check the labels and look for gaps between items or for anything that doesn’t belong where it is. Make a note of any anomalies you find. You start on that end and I’ll start on this.” He strode off into the darkness.

    I spent a painstaking hour examining shoes, rows and rows of them, enough to keep every homeless toe in the city toasty. Did you know that in seventeenth-century France shoes were one-shape-fits-both-left-and-right? Or that ancient Egyptians gave their mummies shoes made of papyrus and palm leaves? Or that in fourteenth-century Poland, shoe toes grew so long and pointy that fashionable gentlemen looked like they were wearing snakes on their feet?
    I didn’t find anything out of place in the shoe section. There was a gap where a patron had borrowed a pair of size 12-D pumps, but I found a call slip for it on file.
    Checking a row of platform shoes from Renaissance Venice, I turned the corner and was surprised to find Marc Merritt with a pair of brown work boots in his hand.
    “Oh, so you are working on this stack today?” I said.
    “No, I’m down in the Dungeon,” he said.
    “What’s the Dungeon?”
    “Stack 1.”
    “So what are you doing up here, then?”
    “Returning these.”
    “Oh, okay. Want me to file your call slip?”
    “No, I . . . I didn’t fill one out. I just borrowed them for a little while—my shoes got wet and my feet were cold. I figured nobody would notice they were gone. Don’t tell, okay?”
    “Sure.” I wondered whether this was one of those suspicious requests Mr. Mauskopf wanted me to look out for. Surely not—after all, Mr. Mauskopf knew Marc himself and had recommended him for the job. He’d even said he was friends with Marc’s uncle. If anything suspicious was going on with Marc, he would surely know more about it than I would. Besides, this was Marc Merritt, asking me for a favor! How could I refuse?
    “Thanks, Elizabeth.” Marc hurried off.
    A few cabinets later I found a terrible jumble in a section of leggings and chaps. I started to sort them out, but I couldn’t figure out the documentation, so I bit back my pride and asked Aaron.
    “Wow, this is pretty bad,” he said. “It looks like my