Hidden Charm

by Kristine Grayson

  He hadn’t been back here in years either, but it really hadn’t changed. Even the coffee percolating in the back was as familiar as the rest of the space. And the fresh coffee smell covered up the slightly animal scent left by the cats and the dogs.

  Every creature in the room lifted its head as he came in. Including Selda, who sat behind the room’s only desk. Books were scattered on its top, along with piles of file folders.

  When Selda saw him, she pulled her cat’s eye glasses down her nose and peered over them.

  “Henry?” she asked, standing slowly.

  She sounded just a little panicked. And of course she would be. She hadn’t seen him in human form in months, maybe years. She had tried. She had come to his house dozens of times, but he wouldn’t open the door, assuring her from the inside that he was just fine.

  “Selda,” he said, hoping he sounded calm, and rational, and completely normal (at least for him). “There’s a woman outside who says she needs help. Her name is—”

  “I want to know what’s going on with you first,” Selda said, and she used her It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature voice. She had been cast, with the help of one of the members of the Archetype Place, in those 1970s commercials, and they had suited her. She was zaftig and wore caftans even now and she looked comforting until she gave you the look she was giving him right now.

  “I—.” He had no idea how to explain anything about what had just happened to him. So he decided to ignore the (very powerfully put) question, and said, simply, “The woman, she’s, um, Rapunzel, and she’s here because she says her husband is missing.”

  “Sonny?” Selda asked, letting herself be distracted from her question. But she clearly hadn’t lost track of Henry’s sudden change, because she lingered with that look for just a half second, making it even more pointed, as if it said to him, We’ll deal with you later.

  “Yeah, Sonny,” Henry said, feeling even stupider than he had felt earlier. Was he the only person who didn’t know that Sonny was married to a woman? A stunningly beautiful very-famous-in-a-fairytale-way woman? How could he have missed that?

  “Well, that just can’t be possible,” Selda said. “Of all the people who’ve come from the Kingdom, Sonny is the one who can probably defend himself the best.”

  “Just because you’re good doesn’t mean you can’t be caught by surprise,” Henry said. He’d been good at most things way back when, and then pffffffft! suddenly he was a frog.

  Okay, it hadn’t been quite as simple as that, but it felt that simple. And that fast.

  “I’d say send her back here, but this doesn’t seem like a send-her-back moment,” Selda said. “I’ll come out there. We’re probably going to need all hands on deck.”

  “If this is an all-hands-on-deck moment,” Henry said, focusing for the first time at the actual seriousness of all of this, “then you’ll need the resources of your office. I’ll bring her back. You start lining things up.”

  Selda rapped a fist on the edge of her desk, looking more shaken than he had ever seen her. “This is a real crisis, Henry,” she said quietly.

  Yeah, he was just beginning to understand that, but not quite what made it a crisis.

  “I thought Kingdom members get attacked a lot.” At least it was a lot by his standards. He was the one who took in the reports, dealt with people whose exes or old “friends” or even older foes managed to cross into the Greater World. Crisis after crisis after crisis, all important to whoever reported it and none of it felt like a crisis to him.

  “Not Sonny,” Selda said. “He’s one of our purest warriors.”

  She had never used that word before, at least, not in front of Henry.

  “His defenses have defenses,” she was saying. “No one should be able to get around them.”

  Henry frowned. He had already mentioned how surprise could catch even the best warrior off guard. How was Sonny different?

  Selda was shaking her head, as if warning off more questions. She put one hand on his arm, then started as her skin touched his.

  “You’ll have to tell me why you abandoned Froggy,” she said. “Is it related to this?”

  Related in all the wrong ways, he almost said, but didn’t. Related by marriage. Related—

  “No,” he said. “Not really.”

  Then he pivoted and headed toward the door so Selda couldn’t see his face. He had been manipulating his frog avatar so long that he no longer knew which emotions showed up on his human face and which ones didn’t.

  “Henry,” she started and he could tell from the tone of her voice that she had seen something.

  He waved a hand, without turning around. “Let me get Rapunzel,” he said, “and then we’ll figure it all out.”

  Chapter 6

  Zel paced nervously in the reception area. It shouldn’t be taking him so long, should it? Wasn’t he supposed to get someone to help her? Couldn’t he sense the urgency?

  Or maybe he sensed the attraction, and it confused him. She had no idea. That was one reason why she avoided the magical as much as she could. They had all been raised around other magical types, and they all knew how to handle their magic, and how to see it in others. They had a great understanding of it.

  She didn’t. Being raised alone, with books for friends and attendants who could barely talk to her did not make it easy for her to learn anything special.

  Sonny kept telling her to mingle with her own kind, but she didn’t want to. Truth be told, she was afraid of magical people. She was deep down worried that someone would capture her again, and take her back to that tower.

  And now, someone had taken Sonny.

  She paced to the side of that huge reception desk, and then peered around the corner. A narrow hallway with a lot of doors seemed to go off into the distance. She thought she could hear voices, but she wasn’t sure.

  And she wasn’t sure if she should head down that hallway, or if she should continue to wait.

  She was awful at waiting.

  She walked back into the reception area. Her gaze caught that not-so-little frog sitting on its lily pad, its mouth still open in an almost human O. Shouldn’t it be moving? Shouldn’t it be talking?

  It had seemed like it was about to say something when it froze in place.

  Maybe it was more mechanical than magical. That would explain why it froze up. Technology often froze up or broke down around the magical. She didn’t have much magic, at least that she and Sonny had been able to figure out, so she was able to use more tech than the average Kingdom survivor. But even then “more” was a relative term.

  The tablets the production teams gave her lasted maybe three months, if she was lucky. The laptops she worked on often had weird glitches. She had learned to ask anyone who sat in her chair on set to remove their favorite bits of tech. Smartwatches and other tiny bits of gear, like Fitbits, were usually the first to fall apart around her.

  That frog didn’t look like a piece of tech, though. It left footprints. There were some dead flies near the edges of the lily pad and they looked partially consumed. Its skin (skin? Did frogs have skin or was it called something else?) was a little flaky. If it were human, she’d say it needed lotion. But it was a frog. Or a frog icon. Or a frog avatar. Or maybe even a magical frog.

  “Miss Rapunzel?”

  She jumped, and silently cursed herself. It wasn’t like her to make her nerves visible.

  The incredibly good-looking man was standing near the opening to the hallway. He had a sad expression his face, and she had the sense he had been standing there for a moment, long enough to watch her stare at that frog.

  She had no idea why that seemed to bother him, but it did.

  His stunningly beautiful green eyes met hers.

  “Come with me,” he said, his tone formal.

  The formality seemed odd coming from a man in an ancient polo shirt, ripped black jeans, and no shoes. He was intriguing, and right now, she didn’t have time for intriguing.

  She
followed him, and fought with herself the entire way. She wanted to tell him to call her Zel. She wanted to learn his name. She wanted to focus on him, so she wouldn’t have to focus on Sonny.

  Her fingers twisted together as she passed all the closed doors. Sonny. She was trying so hard not to think about him. He might be dead.

  Or worse.

  The gorgeous man led her into a cavernous yet comfortable room at the end of the hall. This room smelled of coffee with an undertone of cats and sweaty dog. That was probably because cats and dogs were strewn everywhere, as if they were as much decoration as the pillows on the floor, the couches, and the chairs. Spider plants covered the view from the window.

  Everything was done in browns and oranges, except for the white macramé plant hangers. The room looked like it hadn’t changed since the 1970s, and it probably hadn’t.

  Only the age of the furniture, and the way that it all looked like it had been here for decades made it seem old. Right now, everything 1970 was back, and Zel had privately thought that a shame.

  But the woman standing near the broad desk probably didn’t think so. She looked up, and Zel started. She recognized that face, not because she had seen it before (although she had on the day she had arrived with Sonny from the Kingdom) but because it had been on TV a lot in the 1970s. It’s not nice…

  In spite of herself, Zel felt a thin trace of amusement followed quickly by irritation. She was really good at distracting herself and focusing on something different. It had been a survival skill all of her life, but it wasn’t serving her now.

  She had to focus, or Sonny would be in even worse trouble.

  The woman—Griselda—or rather, Selda, as everyone called her—walked over to Zel and took her hands in her large ones. Zel had the sense that Selda would have enfolded her in a hug, if she felt a hug was appropriate.

  People didn’t randomly hug Zel, though. She didn’t want anyone to touch her without permission. She was afraid of being gathered up and whisked away before anyone even noticed.

  She was afraid…

  Oh, those words were in the center of everything, weren’t they? And now, a fear she hadn’t even known she had had become realized.

  “Sonny,” Selda said, her voice rich and powerful, warm and calming, just like an Earth Mother’s voice should be. “You’re sure someone took him.”

  Zel nodded. She braced herself for the next question. How do you know? She didn’t know how she knew. She just did.

  “His sword was in the middle of the living room,” she said, not sure if Selda would understand what that meant.

  Selda leaned against the desk as if her knees had gone out from underneath her, as if she needed something to hold her up. Then she nodded.

  “Your living room,” she said. It wasn’t really a question, but it was a question. Selda knew about Sonny, and all that he was doing. He had given up his Greater World job—fencing master to the stars—decades ago, and now worked exclusively on LGBTQ issues, most of them to do with the Kingdom. He was in and out of the Archetype Place a lot.

  “Yes,” Zel said.

  The man—God, she wished she knew his name—was standing just beside the door, hands folded in front of him.

  “Was Sonny working on something that we didn’t know about?” Selda asked.

  “I don’t know,” Zel said. “We didn’t discuss his work much.”

  They hadn’t discussed a lot over the past several years. They lived together. They had been best friends forever, but it had become something routine and comfortable. Movie night, a bit of television when they were both home, dinners at their favorite restaurants. Shopping.

  But no travel, no real discussion of work. Hers had progressed over the years from something that was entirely hands-on to one that required the occasional use of computers and graphics, and his, well, he didn’t dare talk about all of it because he was holding other people’s secrets.

  She wasn’t the only person that Sonny had rescued. She was just the first and, he liked to say, the most important.

  “Did he break pattern?” Selda asked. “Was he doing anything unusual?”

  “I don’t know.” Zel’s voice rose, and she hadn’t meant for it to. She was perilously close to tears. She had no idea how Sonny could disappear. He was so competent, so amazing, so strong. He was her rock, and she—

  She had stopped paying attention long ago.

  “Okay,” Selda said. “I’m bringing in the magical crime scene unit, and I’d like to bring in Cantankerous Belle too.”

  Was Selda asking for permission to do this? Zel didn’t entirely understand.

  “Do you need my permission for that?” Zel looked from Selda to that gorgeous man. The man was frowning. “I mean, you have my permission. For anything and everything. I’m terrified that something awful has happened to Sonny.”

  She wasn’t sure what something awful actually meant, and neither Selda nor the man asked her about it.

  “Okay,” Selda said. “Let me get the team together, and we’ll all go to your place. I don’t want you to go without us.”

  “I won’t,” Zel said. “Besides, you’ll get there first no matter what. I’m going to have to drive back there.”

  “Drive?” the man said. “Why can’t you just appear?”

  “Because,” she said, feeling a little annoyed like she always did when she had to explain how inadequate her own magic was, “I don’t have that ability.”

  The man shot a confused glance at Selda. Selda made a slight gesture with her right hand, dismissing any questions.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” Selda said to Zel. “We’re going to bring in the magical crime scene unit. We’ll see what kinds of information they can give us, and we’ll go from there. I’d like you to arrive at the same time as the rest of us. Would you mind if someone brought you there?”

  Zel swallowed hard. No one had magicked her anywhere since Aite had done so all those years ago. She wouldn’t even let Sonny do it.

  They had come to the Greater World through a passageway, because she had this terror of being magicked like that.

  “I’d—like to drive,” she said. “I can give you a key.”

  She knew the moment the words came out of her mouth just how stupid that sounded. She didn’t need to give them a key. They could get in on their own.

  “The house isn’t warded?” the man asked.

  Her lips thinned. The memories of the wards in that tower had made her uncomfortable. Sonny had been catering to her phobias for years. And sometimes those phobias didn’t really make sense.

  “It’s protected,” Zel said, “against a woman named Aite. But no one else.”

  The man’s face paled. “You ran into Aite?”

  “She’s the one who imprisoned me,” Zel said.

  His mouth turned up in a half-smile, but it wasn’t a joyful smile. More like a smile of acknowledgement—knowledge? Irony?—she wasn’t entirely sure how to read his face.

  Zel couldn’t look at him anymore. She needed to look at Selda.

  “In other words,” Zel said, “you and your magical crime scene unit can get in.”

  “We need you there, Zel,” Selda said. “Tank and her posse will expose the house’s magic, and we’re going to need you to tell us what belongs and what doesn’t. I’ll take you with me.”

  “No, no, no.” Zel backed up, the words out of her mouth before she could even think. “I can’t.”

  “I know,” Selda said. “But—”

  “No,” the man said. “She doesn’t just mean that she lacks the magical ability. There’s another barrier, Selda.”

  Selda glanced at him, frowning, then turned her attention to Zel. “What is it, that barrier?”

  Zel opened her mouth, felt tears again—and was startled by them. She didn’t cry. She closed her mouth, opened it, then closed it again. The words weren’t coming.

  But Selda stared at her, impatient and patient at the same time. Zel had the sense that Selda
would wait as long as it took to get the answer, and would be irritated about it.

  “I don’t do that,” Zel finally said, unable to do more than repeat those words. It was almost as if she were spelled into silence, even though she wasn’t. She just didn’t talk about it.

  Sonny would have understood, but Sonny wasn’t here. Sonny was the reason that she was here, without him, trying to negotiate all of this strangeness.

  “Let me guess,” the man said. “Aite magicked you to that tower.”

  His tone was compassionate, and so were those amazing green eyes. Still, her heart jumped. She didn’t want anyone to see her as clearly as he had just done.

  But she nodded.

  “And you haven’t let anyone magick you since,” he said.

  “Yeah.” That word barely came out.

  Selda rolled her eyes. “Oh, for the sake of all that’s good, no one would take you from here—”

  “Griselda.” The man spoke firmly. “You can’t take her there.”

  Zel felt her breath catch. She tilted her head slightly, not entirely understanding why this man could speak for her.

  “You’re a woman,” the man said. “It would re-enact the trauma.”

  “Trauma,” Selda muttered, as if she didn’t like or didn’t believe in trauma. “An hour plus drive across Los Angeles will delay everything.”

  “So fly her there,” the man said. “Tank is coming with her posse. They’ll fly.”

  “With the fairies?” Zel asked, trying to imagine how a group of fairies the size of hummingbirds would fly her across Los Angeles. Wrapped in a blanket like the clichéd stork images. “No, thank you. I’ll drive. Save the magical identification for when I get there.”

  She was shaking so badly that she had to get out of this room. Yes, she knew she was delaying the help for Sonny, but she could only do so much.

  She walked to the door, her head throbbing from unshed tears, needing to get out of there. If only she were someone else. If only she could get past this. If only—