House of Grimm: Book One of the Grimm Trilogy

Chapter One

Chapter One

The only thing worse than being dead is being missing and presumed dead.

When the police found Rachelle's muddy jacket floating in the river six days ago, everyone around me assumed the worst. That my best friend had drowned, and her bloated body was hooked on a tree branch deep below the surface of the water. Waterlogged and too far down to see.

That's why I'm standing here, in front of an empty casket, attending a funeral for a not so dead, but most likely dead, dead person.

"Are you okay, Dora?" my Aunt Charlotte whispers beside me.

No. My best friend is missing, how am I supposed to be okay? But she's only trying to comfort me. I clutch at the small yellow rose in my hand, reluctant to lay it on the casket. Then all that's left to do is walk out of this suffocating, overly decorated room.

"No good soul goes to waste," my aunt murmurs.

She reaches down and places a long hand over mine, then slides the rose out of my fingers and guides it gently to its final resting place.

"May peace go with her," she says, and bows her head.

I try to do the same, but it doesn't make sense to cry over a missing person.

It makes more sense to try and find them.

I hear a few sniffles behind us and step aside; there's a line. Most of the faces are unfamiliar, and I cringe as some stranger hugs me and tells me how she loved "dear, sweet Rachelle" like she's already gone for good.

I grind my teeth as I duck out of the woman's grasp.

None of this seems real. The flowers, wreaths and garlands that decorate the altar, the sickeningly sweet smell of hydrangeas mixed with the musty scent of the church. It's making me sick to my stomach. Rachelle's mother mutters a quick prayer before turning away, her fingers trailing the side of the coffin as she walks past us, barely able to put one foot in front of the other.

Even her own mother thinks she's dead.

"You sure you don't want to go to the cemetery?" my aunt asks.

I turn to leave and nod. I can't watch Rachelle be buried, even if it is just the idea of her. Because once they put that coffin in the ground, rather she's in there or not, she might as well be. And I'm not giving up on my best friend like everyone else has.

"We'll just go home then," she says, her voice cracking.

I glance out of one of the wide-paned funeral home windows, looking out over the expanse of the cemetery. I wonder how many empty coffins lie in shallow graves, and where all the actual bodies are. How many best friends never came home.

And then something catches my eye.

In the middle of the cemetery, propped up in the wet grass, is an old motorcycle. The rider is standing next to the blue tent and tarp splayed out for Rachelle's faux burial. I watch as she drops a flower into the freshly dug earth, and brushes a long strand of dark hair behind her ear.

Then she turns around and stares up at me.

"Come on," my Uncle Phillip grunts from behind me, "let's get you home then."

When I turn back to the window, the girl is gone.

We stumble through the crowd of mourners toward the church's doors. Elbows jab me left and right, and everywhere I turn is a teary-eyed classmate or neighbor. It's hard to concentrate on getting through the throng when I can barely see two feet in front of me. Then, suddenly, a shoulder hits mine and I pause.