Hidden Charm

by Kristine Grayson

  “I can take you,” the man said quietly.

  “I don’t know you,” she said.

  “He’s trustworthy,” Selda said, “or he wouldn’t be working here.”

  But the look she gave him implied something else was going on, something Zel didn’t entirely understand.

  “My name is Henry,” he said with a small bow. “I understand what Aite can do. She imprisoned me once as well.”

  “In a tower?” Zel asked.

  He shook his head just a little. “In a pond,” he said.

  “In a pond?” she asked, not understanding. “How did you—”

  “Later,” he said. “If you trust me, I can take you to your house without replicating any experience from Aite.”

  Zel’s heart pounded. She wanted to trust him. She wanted to trust all of them. They were the only way she could find Sonny.

  She couldn’t do that alone.

  And her phobias, her unwillingness to even think of magic, were going to get in the way.

  “All right,” she said. “What do we do?”

  Chapter 7

  Henry realized he only had a tiny window to help this woman. It was clear that she had never dealt with the trauma that Aite had inflicted on her.

  He had dealt with the trauma Aite inflicted on him, with Tiana’s help. He hadn’t dealt with the loss of Tiana, though, or their child, or their life together. He had just continued forward.

  He saw way too much of himself, suddenly, in Rapunzel. And she would lose even more if Sonny disappeared for good, since it was becoming clear to Henry that Sonny handled the magical sides of their life together.

  “Tell me where you live,” Henry said, “and think about the back of the house. Then you take my hands, and I’ll get us there.”

  Rapunzel—Zel, Selda had called her—bit her lower lip. “What about my car?”

  “We’ll come back for it,” he said.

  She glanced at Selda, who seemed to be holding her breath. Selda was finally beginning to understand the depth of the trauma here, and the fact that there was more going on than Sonny’s disappearance.

  “You can trust Henry,” Selda said again, and to her credit, she didn’t mention that she hadn’t seen him in human form in—months? Years?—a long time.

  But she had been right when she had told Zel to trust him. Selda had trusted him for decades, even though he had been strange. Selda had trusted him with her business and her client relationships and pretty much everything she could trust him with concerning the Archetype Place.

  He just hadn’t seen it before.

  Zel held out her hands. “Let’s do it before I change my mind,” she said.

  “Address?” he asked.

  She gave it to him, and his breath caught. That was his neighborhood. He lived closer to Hancock Park than she did. She was just off Melrose, not too far from the high school, the kind of place that families moved to now because of the schools and the school district.

  But a hundred years ago—heck, in Hollywood’s heyday—the magical bought a lot of homes in that area. And unlike many of the other residents, the magical held onto those homes. Only they pretended (for the sake of the mortals) that the homes had been passed down from one family member to another.

  It was always amazing, some of the neighbors said (before they moved away) how the resemblance in families went from generation to generation.

  “Is there a problem?” she asked.

  He shook his head, saw Selda out of the corner of his eye, realized that she understood that the closeness of their homes had caught him.

  He had to concentrate, particularly if he was going to get Zel there in one piece.

  He hadn’t traveled with anyone in years.

  He glanced at Zel’s hands. They were small and narrow, with long fingers. Unlike most of the magical who ended up in this town, she hadn’t had a manicure recently, if ever. Her nails were short and unpainted, and she had bitten her cuticles. It looked like she had always bitten her cuticles.

  “Am I holding my hands right?” she asked.

  He nodded, feeling his heart pound. He would have to voluntarily touch her, and that was something he hadn’t done in human form in a long time either. When he had touched people as Froggy, he had done so to irritate them. No one wanted a frog to brush his toes against their hands.

  Most tried not to look irritated at him, but a few had taken their hands back with a look of disgust.

  He actually had to brace himself to touch her.

  Then he slipped his hands forward and took ahold of her wrists. She wrapped her fingers around his wrists so that both of them could hold tight through the magic.

  Her hands were dry and her fingers callused, which surprised him. Clearly she worked with her hands, which also surprised him. So many of the magical didn’t.

  He willed his own hands to remain steady. He didn’t want her to know that his heart rate had increased or that he was feeling a thrum of attraction just at the way her fingers wrapped around his wrist.

  His entire body shivered involuntarily, and he hoped she hadn’t noticed. He didn’t want her to notice. He didn’t want her to think he was afraid to take her back to her own home.

  “Ready?” he asked. Or rather, croaked. Because his voice didn’t quite work the way he wanted it to. (And he hated that the sound had come out as a croak. That bothered him more than he wanted to think about.)

  It was her turn to nod. And she swallowed compulsively. She looked absolutely terrified, and in that moment, he wanted to pull her close and hold her, calming her fears, murmuring against her hair that it was really and truly all right.

  Instead, he placed the address in his mind, located the house in his mental map, and took them there.

  They landed an instant later behind some old untrimmed tall trees that completely encased a wooden fence that had probably been there since the property was built.

  At least there was grass, which scratched against the soles of his bare feet. He twirled a finger and encased his feet in a worn pair of Nikes.

  This was the front lawn, complete with massive (and rather ugly) concrete blocks leading to the front door, moving alongside a brick driveway that was clearly no longer being used. An ancient palm tree grew to the side of the drive, with branches hanging over a fence into the neighbor’s yard.

  The house itself was the Old Hollywood version of French Provençal, with rounded oak doors and fading brick, but someone had added a bright blue modern flat roof addition that looked like another house had attacked the French Provençal, and wouldn’t let go.

  Behind him, he heard dozens of plops! as the magical crime scene techs arrived. Selda was the one who called them techs (because, he suspected, she watched too much television), but he had somehow adopted the phrase. He couldn’t exactly say “people” because not all of them were people.

  He still had his fingers wrapped around Zel’s wrists. She was looking at him, not at the house, and her eyes were wide. She still looked terrified.

  “We’re here,” he said, and unwrapped his fingers from her skin. Part of him didn’t want to let go. He still wanted to pull her close.

  She swallowed hard again, then unwrapped her hands from his and pulled them back. At least she didn’t surreptitiously rub them on her pants legs the way the magical did after he had touched them in his froggy form.

  “All right,” Selda said from behind them. “We’re here. Zel, I want you to take me through the doorway.”

  What looked like a charm of hummingbirds flew over the trees and into the front lawn, but Henry knew better. These small creatures weren’t hummingbirds at all. They were faeries or, more specifically, they were part of Cantankerous Belle’s posse. There were at least twenty of them, although it was hard to tell, because they blurred like hummingbirds did, wings beating so fast it was almost impossible to see them move.

  Zel watched them, alarm on her face. Then she turned slightly and saw the magical crime scene crew.


  He turned as well. The usual two gremlins had taken their place near the gate, and the minotaur was inspecting the path leading to the out-of-use garage.

  Mages in human form whose names Henry could only remember if he looked them up, were shifting from foot to foot on the back lawn. Very Serious Witches, the kind who seemed to have no sense of humor, stood near the griffins, wearing black cloaks despite the heat. A few of them also wore the traditional witch’s hat.

  If anyone peered in here from the street, they would think that Zel was holding some kind of costume party.

  Cantankerous Belle had separated herself from her posse. They were all wearing pink this morning, gossamer dresses that looked like they were made of gauze. Each member of the posse also wore calf-high black boots that looked like they could do some actual damage if they kicked someone (small) with them.

  Tank, as she preferred to be called, also wore pink. Where her posse’s dresses were pink with a sparkly white overgarment, Tank’s was white with a sparkly pink overgarment. It looked like a ripped-up version of a modern little girl’s wedding dress, although Henry would never tell Tank that.

  She floated down so that she was in Selda’s line of sight. Which meant that Tank was off to Henry’s right, near Zel’s face.

  Zel took a tiny step backwards, tripping against one of those ungainly concrete blocks, and nearly losing her balance. Henry braced her with his right hand against the small of her back, holding it just a bit too long.

  “I hear you need some fairy dust.” Tank’s voice sounded like she was an elderly woman who spent too many years smoking and drinking. Some of that, Henry knew, she had cultivated, so that her voice wouldn’t sound tiny and pretty the way that the voice of her nemesis, Tinkerbelle, was portrayed in the media.

  Zel started at the sound of Tank’s voice, which meant that Zel hadn’t ever heard it. She had apparently not run into Tank before.

  Tank wasn’t even looking at her.

  “Yeah,” Selda said. “We’re going to dust the living room.”

  Then she looked at Zel, and asked, “Living room, right?”

  “Right.” Zel’s voice shook a little. She seemed completely overwhelmed.

  “You want to open the door?” Tank asked her, sounding irritated. “No one should use any magic until we know what we’re facing here.”

  Henry didn’t like Tank’s tone, not with Zel.

  “Go lightly here,” he said to Tank. “Her husband has disappeared.”

  Tank frowned, then lowered herself so that she could look Zel in the eyes.

  “The mysterious Rapunzel?” Tank asked. “You’re the person Sonny lives with? I thought Zel was some—”

  “Tank,” Henry said, stopping her.

  “—guy,” Tank said, not letting him step over her voice.

  “He’s my husband,” Zel said miserably.

  “Still doesn’t stop you from being a guy,” Tank said. “This is the 21st century.”

  “I know.” Zel’s voice was small.

  Henry wanted to slip his arm around her, pull her close and protect her. He never wanted to protect people. What was wrong with him?

  “Lay off, Tank,” he said, which was as close to protection as he could get.

  “‘Lay off, Tank?’” Tank floated in front of him. Her wings beat rapidly, making her look even more like a hummingbird. “What’s your interest in this, Froggy? And why are you looking semi-human? What the hell is wrong with you today?”

  He straightened, even though her barbs hit. Her barbs always hit. Tank was foul-mouthed and honest, and she didn’t care who her words hurt.

  It wasn’t the what the hell is wrong with you today that hurt him, though. It was the mention of his nickname. He didn’t want Zel to know that the frog avatar she had been staring at with mild disapproval belonged to him.

  Hell, it didn’t belong to him. It was, most of the time, his entire identity.

  “Tank!” Selda said. “We have a job. And yes, I do need fairy dust.”

  “All right.” Tank slapped her tiny hands together, letting bits of dust float like glitter into the air. “Lead on, Macduff.”

  It’s lay on, Macduff, Henry wanted to say, but he didn’t. Because getting into discussions of Shakespeare might irritate the Very Serious Witches behind him. Witches still hadn’t forgiven Shakespeare for the double, double, toil and trouble scene in Macbeth, although Henry was a bit hazy as to why.

  Zel gave Henry a sideways look. He still had his hand on her back—which was so common in his era, and so not allowed in this one.

  “Sorry,” he muttered, and let his hand drop.

  “No, it’s okay,” she said just as softly as he did. “I was just wondering if you were coming with us.”

  He probably shouldn’t. What he knew about magical crime scenes could fill one of Tank’s thimble-sized beer steins.

  “I wasn’t—”

  “Yeah, bring him along,” Tank said. “I hear that you both have experience with Aite, and if that’s the case, he might be able to make some observations the rest of us won’t see.”

  Zel gave him a startled look. “You know Aite.”

  “Yeah,” Henry said. “She tried to ruin my life too.”

  Zel nodded. “I’m so sorry. You’ll have to—”

  “Hey!” Tank said. “Posse here. Crime scene to expose. Things to do. Chop, chop!”

  She clapped her little hands together again, letting more fairy dust escape.

  “Maybe you should stop giving away people’s secrets, Tank,” Selda said.

  “It’s not a secret if everyone knows it,” Tank said and flew toward the house. She stopped near her posse and gestured a lot, clearly giving them instructions.

  Henry hoped she told them they wouldn’t be needed until she gave them the signal.

  The rest of the magical crime scene crew knew to wait.

  Zel was looking at the front door as if it had hurt her. He could feel her reluctance to go inside, as if it were his own.

  “I’ll be right beside you,” he said quietly. “If something comes at you, I’ll get you out right away.”

  Her shoulders slumped with something that he took to be relief.

  “I shouldn’t be afraid of my own home,” she said.

  But she was, and he didn’t blame her. Something bad had happened here, and they all knew it.

  They just had to find out what that something bad was.

  Chapter 8

  Zel’s skin crawled. She was surrounded by the magical for the first time since she came to the Greater World. She wanted to reach out to Sonny—he would understand, and he would handle it—and she was just beginning to realize how much she had let him take action so she wouldn’t have to deal with her fear.

  She sideways glanced at Henry. He stood strong and tall beside her, looking powerful despite his casual clothes. He was staring at the clutter of faeries hovering in front of her house—her sanctuary—as if something about them bothered him.

  She couldn’t lean on Henry. Even though Griselda said that Zel could trust him, she didn’t know him, and besides, it wasn’t fair. Sonny was her husband, her responsibility, her friend, and she was the one who had to step forward, no matter how hard it was.

  Sonny would have.

  Without a question.

  She straightened her back and shoulders, standing upright. She normally didn’t enter her house through this door. Usually she drove into the garage, and let the door close, then entered through the laundry room just off the guest bedrooms. It wasn’t the best layout, but it was the best the mortal architect could do, decades ago, without gutting the charm of the house.

  She trudged across the front lawn, ignoring the concrete blocks that Sonny loved so much, that, in her mind, had ruined some of the house’s character. The grass crunched beneath her feet—the heat wave even getting to the lawn, which they watered thanks to a grandfathering in that Sonny had managed to get them.

  The front door was made of thick, solid oak, w
ith no window in it at all. The window beside it had extra thick glass, which Sonny had spelled so that it would be hard to break.

  The memory of that spell made her start. She had told Selda that there were no wards, and while that was true, there was a lot of magic around this house.

  Selda had been prudent to bring Zel along after all.

  Zel used her keys to open the three heavy locks on the front door.

  “No spell?” Selda asked. She was just behind Zel, as were a number of the other magical creatures, including some rather terrifying traditional witches.

  Henry stood on the stone entry, next to Selda. The three of them formed a triangle, with Zel as the main point.

  Zel licked her lips, startled at how reluctant she was to tell Selda about the magic.

  “I’m the spell,” Zel said, her cheeks getting warm. Now Selda would know that Zel had misinformed her about the magic in the house.

  “I knew it!” That came from above. Tank hovered, her wings making that buzzing noise that until now Zel had associated with hummingbirds. “I knew there’d be a lot of magic here.”

  “Shut up, Tank,” Henry said evenly.

  Zel wasn’t sure what the conflict was between Henry and Tank—if indeed there was one—but Henry did sound annoyed at her.

  Zel felt a prickling down her back. All of these people, and all of these creatures, they were just too close to her. She didn’t like anyone in her personal space, and at the moment, her personal space was cluttered.

  The last lock clicked, and the door swung open, as it always did. She usually thought of that movement as inviting, but at the moment, she cringed. She didn’t want to see that sword again.

  It was almost like seeing Sonny’s body lying prone on the hardwood floor.

  She stepped inside, blinking at the sudden change in light. The house wasn’t really dark, but it was darker than Los Angeles sunlight in the middle of the day.

  A few years ago, one of Sonny’s friends had redesigned the interior of the house, and Zel always felt a slight moment of surprise whenever she entered this way. Instead of small arched rooms that were sealed off from each other, the living room, dining room, kitchen and den were all one great room, divided by short stubby walls that allowed them to display the artwork that Sonny loved, and his collection of antique swords.