Hidden Charm

by Kristine Grayson

  Henry kept turning, slowly, taking slightly larger and wider steps. But if he couldn’t detect bad magic without doing a spell, she had no idea what the point of looking around actually was.

  She offered the only non-magical idea she had. “The sword isn’t upset,” she said.

  “Would it sense something was wrong?” he asked.

  She didn’t know. “I assume so,” she said. “It saved me back at the house.”

  He stopped moving around, then tilted his head just a little. “Well, that’s something,” he said.

  “But you don’t trust it,” she said.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t. But we have a dilemma. If I perform magic in here, I risk creating the same mess as at your house.”

  She nodded. She had thought of that.

  “But,” he said, “maybe that was part of what that mess was designed to do—to make us all doubt whether or not we should use magic again.”

  She hadn’t thought of that. It made sense. Most of the magical community had been at the house. They had all seen the faerie magic rebounding on the faeries. It had been heartbreaking and terrifying, and that would stick in the mind of anyone.

  Except her. Since she rarely used her magic, and not in the normal ways.

  “Let me try something,” she said. She took a step forward, but Henry put a hand on her arm. Normally when someone touched her like that, it annoyed her, but she didn’t mind Henry’s touch, even when he was trying to stop her from doing something.

  “No,” he said. “This magical attack started with you and Sonny and—.”

  “I have the sword,” she said. “It protected me before.”

  “But that—”

  “It’s all we have,” she said. “Either we get paralyzed by the attack earlier or we figure out some work-arounds.”

  He took a deep breath, as if he were doing that instead of answering her, and then let his hand fall.

  She clung to the sword with her left hand, resisting the urge to pull the sword even closer to her side. Then she reached up with her right and tugged at her newly growing hair.

  She had worked out a system that allowed her to do minor magicks without actually reciting a spell. Spells didn’t work well inside of a movie studio—people always wanted to know what she was doing. (And some of them wanted to know so that they could try it themselves.)

  She twisted the strands with her fingers, and the strands broke off. When she had enough to fill her palm, she moved her hand away from her head.

  Henry was watching closely, as if he had never seen anything like this before.

  Maybe he hadn’t. Most people—most mages—had never seen her use her powers. She had developed them alone and in secret, without training, and that embarrassed her. All she had ever done was work-arounds, not knowing exactly what was possible until she tried it.

  She extended her hand, keeping the fingers curled around the strands until she needed them. Then she opened her fingers slowly, revealing the pile of strands.

  “Safety check,” she whispered to the strands, using the kind of shorthand she always used on the job. It was the way that she conducted a magical safety check, looking for harmful magic or unnecessary magic. She could always modify it to search for friendly magic, but she was afraid the strands would congregate around Henry. (Or wouldn’t congregate around Henry, which was a possibility that she just didn’t want to face right now.)

  Then she blew on the strands. They each flared a brilliant white, something she had never been able to prevent them from doing, no matter how much she wanted to. Then they floated out in the breeze her breath had created, scattering across the room.

  If there was harmful magic, the strands would find it, and gather around it, sometimes sticking to it, if it wasn’t that powerful. The strands would do their best to restrain it.

  She had learned, over time, to expand the spell so that it covered the whole room instead of the direction she had pointed the strands into as she blew on them. They scattered, heading to all the corners of the room.

  If they started to gather into one area, she would pluck more strands and increase the spell. But if they didn’t, they would fall harmlessly to the floor after a few minutes.

  The strands glowed as they floated across the room. They bobbed and weaved around each other, each heading in its own direction. She had always thought this looked like lights reflecting on the surface of a river in the darkest of winters.

  Those little lights unevenly illuminated Henry’s face, making his eyes glimmer. Her breath caught. Some of the strands were circling him, and her heart sank.

  He worked for Selda, for god’s sake. He couldn’t be evil. Selda would know. Everyone at the Archetype Place would know.

  But then, they had gotten caught up in the magic that had destroyed her house, harmed the faeries, made Sonny disappear. Maybe they couldn’t easily detect good from bad either.

  Then the strands swirled upward and away, forming eddies in the air. Little cones formed, like a water spout, moving toward the ceiling.

  They moved upwards, then pancaked against the ceiling.

  Or so it seemed. She tilted her head just a little, then realized that they weren’t pancaked against the ceiling. They were pancaked a few inches away from it.

  She twisted the fingers of her right hand into the hair behind her head, plucking even more of them. She pulled a handful relatively fast, then clutched them, as she had clutched the earlier ones.

  This time, though, she didn’t blow on them. She spoke the two words of the concentrated spell out loud, and tossed the strands into the air.

  These glowed yellow as they floated up. They danced around Henry and, smart man, he didn’t move a single muscle. For a moment, she thought he hadn’t even taken a breath.

  Then the strands coalesced above him, into one single funnel that rose up toward the ceiling. The funnel flattened against them, then some from the side of the room zoomed over, and flattened as well.

  “Can I move?” Henry asked.

  She nodded, but didn’t answer him. As long as the strands were active, she really shouldn’t speak.

  He stepped closer to her, then he peered up sideways just like she had done.

  The strands were undulating against the ceiling, mixing colors, almost like the smoke had done.

  “Should I do something?” Henry asked.

  Zel shook her head. She had seen this before, but usually in studios or on location. She had learned early on while doing her job that she needed to cleanse some magicks out of an area, just so that the filming went well.

  No one knew that she did this: she usually arrived early one morning, and handled the cleansing before everyone else arrived.

  She waited until the undulation above her got extreme. The hair had lost its glow, and now looked like a river of brown, floating on a wavy current near the ceiling.

  She almost raised her hands, then realized she needed to do something with the sword. This was two-handed magic, and she only had one hand.

  She couldn’t give the sword to Henry; it wouldn’t let him touch it. So she leaned the sword against her left leg, keeping her hand near the sword for a moment, until she was confident that the sword was balanced. She made a mental note of how it felt to have the sword leaning on her thigh. That sensation had to remain important, or she would lose track of it in the next few minutes.

  Henry was watching her intently, as if he had no idea what she was doing. Maybe he didn’t, since her magic was so idiosyncratic.

  She raised her hands above her head, and flexed her fingers. The strands stuck together with that command, and then flowed down toward her. When they finally touched her fingertips, she moved her hands quickly, weaving the strands into one long braid.

  She had to work quickly, partly because she couldn’t keep her arms above her head for long periods of time. (She always thought she should practice that, and she never ever did.) The other reason was that some strands would always get loose, just
like they did in normal braiding, and she didn’t dare let the strands get loose at all.

  She braided fast, concentrating on the movement of her hands in the now-thick hair, and also concentrating on the sword resting against her thigh.

  She couldn’t look at Henry right now. She didn’t dare. Focusing on him would take too much attention away from what she was doing.

  She braided and wove and threaded and braided and wove and threaded, and as she did, the lights in the room got brighter.

  She couldn’t look around, but she hoped that Henry was keeping an eye on everything.

  At one point, he started to say something, but she ignored him. She didn’t have the extra brain power for that, as well as everything else.

  Then the tips of her fingers waggled on thin air. Her thumbs held the braids. They felt extremely heavy.

  She gripped them tightly in her fists and lowered her arms.

  Ropes of hair surrounded her, which she hadn’t expected, given the number of strands she had started with. The hair was coiled around her feet. Henry managed to stay away from it. Somehow he had moved farther to her right.

  The entire room now had soft lighting, perfectly placed to emphasize the two-toned couch, the thick rugs, and some paintings on the wall that looked to her like someone had thrown paint against a canvas. But she had lived with Sonny long enough to know that the high-end Los Angeles art community thought those paintings were Art with a capital “A.”

  The sword still leaned against her leg, and she found comfort in that. She also found comfort in the design of the room. It said pure unadulterated Sonny to her, and that always calmed her.

  She finally saw the windows. They were all around—as usual, in a typical Sonny design—but they were covered with blackout curtains. None of the light was filtering out of this space at all.

  That relieved her as well.

  She took the two long braids and thrust them into her right hand. She then closed the fingers of her left hand. When they opened, she was holding a tightly woven mesh bag that she had personally designed as a wig-dying bag. The bag was for her hair, and her wigs, and her job, so even though it appeared small, it really wasn’t. She could cram a lot of hair into it, and nothing would stick out.

  She spread the bag’s opening wide with her left hand and then shoved the two braids into it with her right, working meticulously slowly so that she got every single strand inside that bag.

  She had no idea how long it took. All she knew was that the bag kept looking full and still she managed to stick more inside of it.

  She was sweating by the time she was done. Sweating and staggering just a little.

  But she couldn’t stop. Not until she tied up the bag tightly.

  When she finished, she tilted her head back and closed her eyes for just a moment. If only this day would end. If only it had never started. It was the longest day of her life.

  Then she half-smiled at herself. When she lived in the tower, she had thought those days were long. Ridiculously long.

  They were long because she had nothing to do.

  This day was long because it felt like she was being tested. Being tested and maybe failing.

  Her legs folded beneath her, but a hand went around her waist and caught her.

  “Let’s sit you down,” Henry said.

  “I’m all right,” she said, although the words came out Malrite.

  He didn’t move. She leaned against him, drawing strength from him. He was sturdy and solid and strong, and she needed that more than she could say.

  She stood there for a good five minutes before Henry said, “Do we have to do something with that bag?”

  “Something, yes,” she said. “What, I don’t know.”

  “What would you normally do?” he asked.

  “Dye the hair. Turn it into wigs. Use it for the villains.” She half-smiled. She’d been doing that for generations, and it always added to an actor’s performance. It never ever seeped the evil magic into the actor either. She had tested and checked and triple-checked. But it was a way to dissipate bad magic without making any situation worse.

  “What?” Henry asked. He didn’t understand. Why would he? She wasn’t even sure he knew what she did for a living.

  “Or,” she said, not willing to explain further. “Sometimes I burn it. But that would put smoke into the air, and we can’t do that right now.”

  “What if you can’t…dye it right away?” he asked.

  “I have to. The strands have to be subdued.” She stood up, frowning. They did, too. Either she would have to go to the studio, or she would need some dye.

  Then she looked around the room. This was Sonny’s office and Sonny, bless him, was vain about his hair. He didn’t like to magic it all the time. Sometimes he used dyes. He used to use store-bought dyes until she brought him the good stuff.

  “We need to check the bathroom,” she said. “Sonny probably has what we need.”

  “Can I find it?” Henry asked.

  “No.” With reluctance, she pushed off him and stood up. She wasn’t as tired as she had been. It was almost as if touching him had made her stronger. “I have to do it.”

  This house was originally an adobe ranch. She had been in it numbers of times before Sonny remodeled it, and it didn’t look like he had gutted the house to remodel it, like he had gutted their house. Which meant she knew where the main bathroom was.

  She shifted the bag of hair to her right hand, and grabbed the sword with her left, half expecting the sword to zap her with some negative energy. But it felt like a sword, except maybe a tad heavier than it had been.

  “Follow me,” she said, and led Henry down the hall.

  Chapter 27

  Now that the lights had come up, the office looked high end. Henry had been to a lot of these places over the years—offices inside homes, rezoned for business. The purpose of the design was to impress, yes, but also to make the client feel like the business was friendly, small, and with the client’s own best interest at heart.

  Henry always mistrusted anyone who worked in a place like this. He mistrusted someone who set it up even more.

  Then he mentally shook himself. He was setting himself up to strongly dislike Sonny, a man he had already met and enjoyed. Up until today, he had thought the world of Sonny. But now, he was seeing Sonny as some kind of competition, even though Zel had never expressed any interest in Henry, and had only said good things about her husband.

  Her husband. Whom she knew was attracted to other men. Whom she didn’t sleep with. Who seemed to have relationships with other people, even though she never did. Or at least, that was Henry’s impression of her. That she had never lowered herself to have affairs even though her husband had.

  Now, she clutched a bag stuffed with her own hair in her right hand and gripped a heavy sword with her left hand. She had the sword pointed forward, and if she had been a different woman, she might have yelled, Charge! It seemed like she was heading into some kind of battle, although what kind had yet to be determined.

  She was marching down a narrow hallway with a squared off entrance. Given the fake arches outside—which probably reflected what the house had looked like when Zel and Sonny bought it—the doorway into the hallway should have been arched as well.

  In fact, if the interior of this adobe ranch on a cul-de-sac followed usual LA styles, every single doorway in the place should have had an arch.

  Arches sometimes interfered with magic, though. That was one of the reasons so many castles had arches leading into the important spaces.

  Of course, one of the other reasons was pretty mundane: a properly built arch was sturdier than a squared off doorway.

  The hallway itself was steel-gray and black, just like the living room. Only unlike the living room, there was no spot of white to relieve the darkness. If Henry had been designing the place, he would have put art on the walls—colorful art. Maybe even art with frogs.

  Then he half-smiled at himself in a grim
parody of amusement. He was inserting himself into the design of this place, because he wanted to be closer to Zel. Decorating with frogs indeed.

  The bathroom was halfway down the hall. Standard ranch design, no remodel visible (except in the paint and the no longer arched door).

  The bathroom itself was long and narrow, like so many 1960s bathrooms. The bathroom had been remodeled, though. It had a shower/tub combination on the far wall, a small closed-off area for the toilet, and a tiny vanity that somehow held dual sinks. The bathroom had steel gray fixtures, gray and black subway tile in the shower, and gray and white tile on the floor.

  Had someone consulted Henry on the design before implementing it, he would have said that all that tile would have been dizzying. But it wasn’t. It was, however, aggressively masculine in the design, right down to the shiny black sinks.

  Zel turned on the light with the elbow of her left hand, somehow avoiding hitting the sword against that small vanity. The light fixtures were clear; the light bulbs added a golden cast to the room, softening the edges and making the entire place feel larger.

  Or at least, they did until Henry stepped inside. Then he felt like he was being crammed too close to Zel.

  “You want me to wait in the hall?” he asked.

  She shook her head. She’d been remarkably quiet as she’d worked the spells, and he wondered if that was a necessary part of her magic. She had explained part of it, but not all of it.

  Her magic was unique. He had never seen anything like it and knew of no one else who even came close to creating spells like this. He wondered if some of the spells came from being trapped in that tower, with no magical instruction (except maybe some that might have come from Aite).

  “Would you mind checking the medicine cabinet for me?” Zel asked. Her voice held just a touch of irritation, as if she had expected him to think of that himself.

  He probably should have, given that they were looking for hair dye. He squeezed past her and grabbed the edge of the wide mirror above the sink. As he did so, he saw his own reflection.