Free The Grimm Legacy by Polly Shulman

than seemed entirely necessary.
    “Come on, buddy, I’ve got to get back to work, and your mom’s going to wonder what happened to you,” I told him.
    He reluctantly let me lead him out into the hall. Once there, he started charging down it. I ran to catch up. “Hey! Where are you going?”
    “I gotta find my butter.”
    “Okay, kid, hold your horses. Where’s your mom? Maybe we should take you to Ms. Callender.”
    “I gotta find my butter ! Butter! Butter!”
    “Hey, calm down, sweetie. What is it? Are you hungry?” I knelt and took him by the shoulders. He shook me off and started stomping his feet.
    “Where’s my butter? I want my butter!”
    “Andre? Andre, where are you?” Marc Merritt appeared as if by magic at the end of the hall. He was full size. I felt a wave of embarrassment for having imagined that he’d been tampered with by a shrink ray.
    The kid—Andre—ran to him, his little feet thudding like pneums, and threw himself against Marc’s legs, crying, “Butter!”
    Marc knelt down and hugged him. “Brother yourself! Where’d you go to? Didn’t I tell you to stay put? You scared me! Don’t ever do that, okay?”
    “Sorry, Butter. I hadda go, ” explained Andre. “The girl taked me.”
    Marc looked up as if noticing me for the first time. The look was not altogether friendly. He often looked arrogant, but this time I felt as if he was accusing me of something.
    “I took him to the bathroom,” I said. “He said he was going to have an accident. So he’s your brother?”
    “Yeah. Yeah, that’s Andre. Thanks,” he said, thawing a little. “Say thank you to Elizabeth, Andre.”
    “Thank you, Libbet,” said Andre.
    “Did you wash your hands?” asked Marc.
    “Yeah, I like the wind thing. It goes fffffffffff, fffffffffff, fffffffffff . It’s the girls’ room. They have toilets there too.”
    Marc swung him to his shoulder as lightly as if he were lifting a kitten, not a solidly built three-year-old. “Okay, bro, let’s get you to day care. Say bye to Elizabeth.”
    “Bye-bye, Libbet,” said Andre, waving at me.
    “Bye, Andre.”
    “Thanks, Elizabeth,” said Marc, more warmly this time. “Thanks for taking care of him. Sorry for the trouble.”
    It felt good to have Marc Merritt thanking me. I watched as he carried Andre off down the hallway.
    I noticed he was wearing the brown work boots again. Were they his? I found myself wondering. Or were they the mysteriously misshelved ones? Stop it, I told myself. If I wanted to make friends, I needed to be more trusting.
    I finished putting away the opera gowns and trundled my hand truck back to the staging area. Aaron was sitting at his usual desk. He was mending something under a bright lamp, which cast the usual sharp shadows across his cheekbones.
    “Anjali?” he said, looking up.
    “No, just Elizabeth,” I answered, slightly testily.
    His face fell. “Oh. Hi, Elizabeth.” I could hear the disappointment in his voice. How flattering.
    “What are you doing?” I asked.
    “I’m darning a sock,” he said, holding it up to show me.
    “What’s that lump inside it?”
    “A sock egg.”
    “A sock egg? I didn’t know socks hatched from eggs.”
    “Only the best ones do. I can’t wear the cheap kind, the ones that grow on trees. They give me blisters.”
    “Riiiiight, okay. Is that from the Grimm Collection?” I asked.
    “Of course not. It’s just an ordinary sock egg,” he said shortly.
    “I meant the sock.”
    “Why would it be? And why do you keep asking about the Grimm Collection?”
    “Because it makes you mad, and you look so funny when you snarl,” I said. “Is it? The sock, I mean. From the Grimm Collection.”
    “No, it’s from my sock drawer. It got a hole. My toe was poking through—it was very uncomfortable.”
    “Oh.” I was kind of impressed, despite myself. How many guys would bother to sew up a hole in their sock? “Seriously, what’s a sock egg?” I asked.
    He reached into the sock and