Hidden Charm

by Kristine Grayson

  “Because you misunderstood what we do,” Atropos said.

  “We do not interfere,” Clotho said, her chin up, blue eyes blazing.

  “…unless something has gone really wrong,” said Lachesis, eyeing the other two with concern.

  “This is really wrong,” Henry said fiercely. “The dragon is using rebound magic.”

  “Rebound magic?” Atropos’s dark eyes had grown wide.

  “We saw it with the faeries first,” Henry said.

  Zel felt a flash of guilt. The faeries would have been fine if she hadn’t gone to the Archetype Place. All of them would have been fine if she hadn’t gone.

  But then Sonny wouldn’t be standing here beside her.

  “The rebound magic attacked the faeries?” Clotho said.

  “I know you don’t like them much,” Henry said, “but they were helping. Tank in particular—”

  “We have no opinion about them one way or another,” Lachesis said, as archly as Clotho had spoken earlier.

  “We simply must wrangle them and their magic more than we wrangle magic from others,” Atropos said.

  Sonny wasn’t listening, though. He had put a hand on Zel’s arm. “Is Tank all right?” he asked quietly.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “She brought in a lot of the faeries, and they all got injured, and some of them…”

  She shook her head, feeling the sadness and terror and anger that she had been suppressing all day rise inside her. Those tears threatened again, but this time not because she was afraid for Sonny. But because she was overwhelmed.

  “Dragons killing faeries,” Clotho muttered.

  Lachesis frowned at all of them. “How, then, if there is a dragon-faerie war, did you get involved?”

  “I did it,” Zel said, as both Henry and Sonny waved their hands, trying to stop her. “I asked for help at the Archetype Place, and Selda brought in Tank, and—”

  “Of course you asked for help,” Henry said, stepping forward, as if he could take the brunt of whatever was coming their way. “Sonny had disappeared. You thought he was in trouble.”

  “I thought he was dead,” she said.

  “I wasn’t sure what was happening for a while either,” Sonny said.

  “Alessandro,” Atropos said. “You caused this?”

  “No,” Sonny said. “I was about to have breakfast when—”

  “I caused it,” Zel said.

  “You did not,” Henry said. “You weren’t even there.”

  But all three of the Fates were looking at Zel. She had never felt gazes so powerful. It felt like all three women were looking into her soul.

  “What did you do, child?” Clotho asked gently.

  Henry closed his eyes next to her, and tilted his head back. Zel could feel his frustration. He didn’t want her to say anything.

  Sonny had his head down. He knew more than he was saying.

  “I don’t know,” Zel said. “But the dragon took Sonny to get to me.”

  “Maybe the dragon is working with Aite,” Henry said.

  “Aite?” Lachesis asked.

  “We dealt with Aite centuries ago,” Atropos said, and then frowned. “It was centuries, wasn’t it?”

  Clotho waved a hand. “I have no idea. Before we were fired.”

  “Fired?” Henry asked.

  Lachesis rolled her eyes. “Long and irrelevant story.”

  “We just mark time by that,” Atropos said.

  “You’d be amazed at how much we learned about your world,” Clotho said.

  “Although we are being distracted,” Lachesis said.

  “Why ever would you think Aite was after Zel?” Atropos said.

  “Aite imprisoned me,” Zel said, her voice small. She wasn’t understanding any of this.

  “Yes, yes,” Clotho said. “We are aware of her penchant for imprisoning the magical.”

  “She always did it when she felt threatened,” Lachesis said.

  “We gave her several warnings,” Atropos said.

  “And she heeded none of them,” Clotho said.

  “So we imprisoned her ourselves,” Lachesis said, with a smile.

  Atropos made a face at Lachesis. It was one of those warning expressions, the kind that said Enough!

  “We wanted her to understand what she was doing to others on a visceral level,” Atropos said.

  Clotho shook her head. “It is not working, however.”

  “We believe she lacks empathy,” Lachesis said.

  “So we must find another punishment,” Atropos said.

  Zel realized she had her mouth wide open. She had always thought Aite was still on the loose. Henry had gone gray. And Sonny had a hand over his face, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “Which is neither here nor there,” Clotho said.

  “We are more concerned about the dragon,” Lachesis said.

  A book appeared in Atropos’s hand. “We deal with so few dragons.”

  Clotho looked directly at Zel again. This time, Zel’s heart rate spiked. There was something deeply disapproving in Clotho’s gaze.

  “What did you do to upset a dragon?” Clotho asked.

  “I don’t know,” Zel said. “It was after me, though. It said I had ruined its life.”

  “Yes, dear,” Lachesis said. “The question we need the answer to is how.”

  “I don’t know,” Zel said, feeling panicked. “Whatever I did wasn’t deliberate.”

  “The dragon said Zel took its protection and its entertainment,” Henry said.

  “And it said something about streaming services,” Sonny said. “At first, I thought I was hallucinating that, and then the dragon said something about Netflix to Zel.”

  “Netflix,” Atropos said. “I adore Netflix.”

  “We learned about streaming services just recently,” Clotho said, smiling. “We adore them.”

  “We especially like the range of movie choices,” Lachesis said.

  “Look,” Henry said. “I know you digress and everything, but we have injured faeries, entranced mages, and a burning house with a crater that goes all the way to L.A.’s core, so I think—”

  “You didn’t tell us any of this,” Atropos said.

  Zel felt dizzy. These women were impossible.

  “Not for lack of trying,” Henry said in annoyance.

  “Well,” Clotho said, “rather than listen to more prattle…”

  “…we shall stream it all,” Lachesis said.

  “Unlike your dragon,” Atropos said, “we can stream events.”

  And then all three women disappeared.

  The area felt empty without the women. It almost felt like a movie set. The waterfall continued its somewhat quiet roar, the pool still looked inviting, and the air smelled crisp. But something about the entire area felt limited, almost as if Zel could walk around it, and find herself among cameras, electrical wires, and catering tables.

  “What was that?” Zel asked.

  “They govern all that’s magic,” Henry said. “They’re like our legal arm. How come you don’t know that?”

  “My fault,” Sonny said. “Zel, none of this is about you. It’s all about me.”

  “It seems that it’s all about her,” Henry said. He seemed to stand taller when he was talking to Sonny, as if Henry felt a bit threatened by him.

  But who would feel threatened by Sonny? Sonny was uber competent, but not aggressive—unless a person was trying to hurt someone he loved.

  “No,” Sonny said, then turned toward her, his expression open. “Zel, I didn’t push anything. I knew that you had never studied magic or learned how our culture worked, and I didn’t force you to learn it. I figured you didn’t need it. So, I just handled things.”

  Zel nodded. She had realized that. And she had realized how passive she had been. She had let him do it all, because it was easier.

  “Yet somehow she got afoul with this dragon,” Henry said.

  Zel nodded. She walked to the edge o
f the pool. She needed to be away from Sonny and his guilt, and Henry and his urgency.

  She needed to think.

  But all she could focus on was movie sets.

  And that smell. That dry deserty smell that she had encountered in so many old buildings around Los Angeles. And in the mountains around the city. And in most of the location sites that made the various crews she had worked with so very nervous.

  She blinked, thought, remembered. That old house at the edge of Death Valley. It had a live internet connection, which had driven the film crew nuts, because they had no idea how to shut it off. They wanted to because they thought someone was watching them film, maybe even stealing some footage.

  But the internet connection vanished after she cleared out all of the loose magic. Magic and technology usually didn’t work well together, but she knew that dragons had special powers. They could handle metals better than faeries (and loved anything metallic and shiny), and that might have given dragons some extra powers around tech.

  She sank to the ground near the pool. The ground was hard, but the grass was cool. And it was real grass, even though it looked a bit like artificial turf.

  She frowned.

  The dragon had thought Zel would recognize it, and she hadn’t. Because in her life, the clearing of all that loose magic had happened over months and years and sometimes decades.

  Which were just a blip to a dragon.

  If Zel had cleared magic like that daily, then yes, she would have noticed the signature and the source.

  “I’m so dumb,” she whispered, and bowed her head

  “Nonsense, child,” said Clotho from beside her.

  Zel hadn’t even realized that the Fates had returned. But then, her eyes were closed. She opened them now, and saw three sets of feet, encased in white sandals.

  The Fates’ toenails were painted an alternating gold, silver, copper and black, each color topped with glitter.

  Atropos wore a ring on her pinkie toe, and neither of the other Fates did. They had some kind of individuality, but not in a way that Zel understood.

  “You are a very powerful mage,” Lachesis said.

  “You simply did not have enough training,” Atropos said.

  And then all three of them looked at Sonny. He nodded.

  “I know, I know,” he said. “I screwed up.”

  “Damn straight,” Henry muttered.

  Zel was shaking her head. “I didn’t know I was messing with a dragon. If I had known…”

  She didn’t even know how to finish that sentence, because she didn’t know what she would have done if she had known. She hadn’t known about the Fates either, or that she could ask them for help.

  If she had, she would have come here first when Sonny had disappeared.

  “You were not messing with a dragon,” Clotho said.

  “You were protecting your city from the dragon,” Lachesis said.

  “It had made serious inroads into the infrastructure,” Atropos said.

  “And no one had noticed,” Clotho said.

  “Not even you,” Henry said, fitting into their weird verbal rhythm.

  All three women glared at him, and Zel scrambled to her feet. She didn’t want him to get into trouble because he was defending her.

  Lachesis was frowning. “What had you said before? That odd agreement phrase.”

  “Damn straight,” Atropos whispered.

  “Yes, that’s it,” Clotho said.

  “Damn straight!” Lachesis said.

  And then all three women laughed.

  “I don’t think this is a laughing matter.” Zel didn’t like the way they were treating this crisis. Half the magical community was ensorcelled, and another group might be dead. Her house was gone, and the entire neighborhood might burn down.

  “Ah, child,” Atropos said. “We must always smile in the face of disaster.”

  “Or we cannot live productive lives,” Clotho said.

  “I disagree,” Henry mumbled, and, deep down, Zel did too.

  “Never fear,” Lachesis said. “We shall corral this dragon.”

  “We already know who it is,” Atropos said.

  “Are you going to imprison it?” Sonny asked, with more charge behind his voice than Zel had ever heard before. He actually wanted the dragon imprisoned? Those hours he had been alone with it must have been horrible for him. He didn’t believe in imprisonment much at all. Only for the worst of criminals.

  “Dragons are impossible to imprison properly,” Clotho said.

  “They like the isolation, and their magic makes it easy for them to make a prison into a comfortable lair,” Lachesis said.

  “With dragons, we have found the best thing to do is to keep them distracted,” Atropos said.

  “And this one has actually given us a clue how to do it,” Clotho said.

  “You’re going to reward the thing with Netflix,” Henry said, shaking his head. His mouth was thin with some kind of fury.

  “Would you rather that we let it remain in a lair where it can mess with the magical somewhere else?” Lachesis asked.

  Henry’s cheeks darkened. “No,” he said.

  “We are, fortunately, at peak TV,” Atropos said.

  Zel let out a snort of surprise. One of the producers she worked for used to say that. Were the Fates reading the trades?

  “Which means there is a lot for the dragon to choose from,” Clotho said.

  “Decades and decades worth,” Lachesis said.

  “We shall limit its access to the rest of the world,” Atropos said.

  “But while it’s consuming peak TV, it probably won’t even notice,” Clotho said.

  “After all,” Lachesis said. “It was your severing of its entertainment portal that caused it to act.”

  She addressed that last to Zel.

  “I hadn’t even realized I had done it,” Zel said.

  “And no one else did either,” Atropos said.

  “Most of the magical do not have the skills to destroy dragon magic,” Clotho said.

  “And be aware,” Lachesis said. “You didn’t just wipe that magic away. You made sure the spell could not return.”

  “I did?” Zel asked.

  “You did,” Atropos said.

  Then Clotho crossed her arms and glared at Zel. “You really must get training, child.”

  “How?” she asked.

  “It’s on me,” Sonny said. “I could—”

  “You, Alessandro,” Lachesis said, “have done enough.”

  “Don’t you recognize who stands beside you?” Atropos asked.

  “Henry’s the Frog Prince,” Sonny said. “We’ve worked together.”

  Sonny seemed deeply confused. Even Henry did. Zel had been confused since they got to this place. She stood slowly. Standing made her feel like an equal in this conversation, something she desperately needed.

  “Ah, you see, but you do not see,” Clotho said, more to the others than to Sonny. Although it seemed like her remark was aimed at Sonny.

  “I’ve only met Henry in person a few times,” Sonny said. “Decades ago, in fact. Mostly, I do what everyone else does. I deal with Froggy.”

  “He is truly clueless,” Lachesis said to the other two Fates.

  “Perhaps that explains why he persists in remaining in a personal position that does not favor him,” Atropos said.

  “What?” Sonny asked.

  “They mean us,” Zel said quietly. “They mean our relationship.”

  Sonny swung his head toward her as if he hadn’t even considered that. “What’s wrong with our relationship?”

  Zel sighed, and didn’t say what she was thinking which was that was what was wrong with their relationship. The fact that Sonny didn’t give it much thought at all. He had no idea how his protection had ended up harming her, or how much she had shut herself down.

  They hadn’t had a discussion on relationships since they moved into the house, decades before. Then they had decided to maintain th
e separate bedrooms, and Sonny had declared that they could both pursue romantic relationships without upsetting the other.

  Only he had never spoken about love.

  She glanced at Henry, who had a slight frown on his handsome face. She cringed just a little, realizing that thinking about love made her immediately think about Henry, not Sonny.

  She was as much to blame as Sonny was. If she had found someone else (sooner), she would have discussed what to do with the fake—well, not real—marriage with Sonny.

  But she hadn’t looked for another person, and Sonny apparently hadn’t either, and now they were here, together, alone, and lonely in ways that neither of them wanted to acknowledge.

  “I don’t know if that’s what they mean,” Sonny was saying to Zel.

  “We mean,” Clotho said loudly, as if she was making an announcement, “that you have stood in the way of true love too long.”

  “What?” All three of the non-Fates spoke at the same time. Then they glanced at each other.

  Zel looked at Henry first. His expression was pained, his eyes were sad, and he seemed almost lost.

  She actually had to make herself look at Sonny.

  Who didn’t seem upset at all. Instead, he had a half-smile on his face.

  “I’m the dumb one, Zel,” he said. “You two have known each other how long?”

  “Today,” she said, even though it felt like forever. “We just met today.”

  Sonny’s frown returned.

  “Alessandro,” Lachesis said, “you and Rapunzel deserve true love. Your relationship has prevented that.”

  Sonny’s frown grew deeper.

  “For both of you,” Atropos said.

  “But we love each other,” Sonny said.

  “There is a difference between true love and the love of a good friend,” Clotho said.

  Henry had moved back slightly, as if he believed the conversation did not include him.

  Maybe it didn’t, but Zel wanted him beside her. She grabbed his arm. He put his hand over hers, then dislodged it, and let her hand fall.

  He wanted her to stand alone.

  He was right, too. She needed to learn how to be by herself.

  “You have an opportunity now,” Lachesis said.

  “Build your own lives,” Atropos said.

  “Separately,” Clotho said, as if the point wasn’t clear.