Geek Romance: Stories of Love Amidst the Oddballs

by Grayson, Kristine

  Not that Charming had ever used it.

  But he wasn’t going to think about PETA. Or anyone from the kingdoms. He had enough reading material in the car to last him the entire trip plus some, and he still hadn’t gone through the first aisle in the first exhibition hall.

  If he felt overwhelmed by the number of books before, he felt worse now. Booth after booth after booth, representing publisher after publisher after publisher, filled with book after book after book, all of them for this season’s list or next season’s. No one had back stock, except in the catalogue, although some of the evergreen books did have backers deeper in the pavilion—at least that was what his program said.

  His program also gave him listings of panels. He could get into all of them with his lovely purple badge.

  He was torn between listening to writers or picking up their wares. He wished he could do both. And in some cases, he could, since some of the panels were being filmed for—well, maybe not for posterity, but for people who hadn’t attended at all.

  Even with two more days of this, he doubted he would see much of it. Not just the panels, but the books, the related materials, the third and fourth exhibition halls. He was actually despairing of getting through the entire thing, even though another book dealer, seeing his sadness, commiserated.

  Don’t worry, chum, the other dealer said. I’ve been coming for twenty years, and I’ve never once left the main exhibition area.

  As if that made him feel better.

  For the first time in his life, he wished he had magic so that he had could explore every single one of the nooks and crannies. But even he knew that wasn’t how magic worked. He’d have to pay some horrible price for that wish, and he wasn’t willing to do it.

  He’d already paid price enough when he married Ella.

  He was just coming back into the hall when he saw her—that woman—Snow White’s stepmother. What was her name? He didn’t know for sure, which wasn’t that unusual. In the kingdoms, names had power, especially to the magical.

  And if his memory was right (and he wasn’t sure it was), she had some magical powers.

  How could anyone with magic be bitter? He wouldn’t have been. Of course, he didn’t understand how anyone with magic could be a failure either, but a bunch of them were.

  More than a bunch really. Most of them.

  Still, he found her strangely compelling and just a little sad. He actually understood her rant—a little, anyway. He’d seen the way that his father and others had treated Ella’s stepmother, who hadn’t been a bad woman. She had just been desperate. Her husband had died, leaving her with a stepdaughter she hadn’t known about, a house that wasn’t paid for, and two daughters of her own.

  Sure she struggled, and yes, she had been verbally abusive to Ella—by Greater World parlance. In the Third Kingdom, she had been kind. She hadn’t turned Ella out of the house. She’d fed her, clothed her (if poorly), and had given her a roof over her head, when she’d been within her legal right to abandon her.

  As a wedding present to Ella, his father had imprisoned her stepmother, and Ella thought that just punishment. She’d been gleeful about it, which had disturbed Charming then even though he was besotted with her.

  Now he was appalled—and a bit suspicious. He had a hunch the fact that the stepsisters got blinded at the reception by a pack of out-of-control birds had more to do with magic of the paid-for variety than the bad luck everyone had attributed it to.

  He shuddered. Then he shoved the overstuffed bags in his car and headed back to the pavilion.

  Halfway there, he saw one of the woman’s PETA companions, who was—unless Charming missed the guess—a flying monkey. Only he had stuffed his wings into a 1960s Sergeant Pepper’s coat and put on a hat, a fake ZZ-Top beard and sunglasses. He looked human enough, until you peered and realized that bluish fur covered not only the skin around his eyes and his forehead, but also his hands and forearms.

  He carried two signs, and Charming gasped when he saw them:

  Book Unfair! Destroy the Lies!

  As he got closer, he could smell the scent of fresh Magic Marker. The flying monkey loped ahead of him.

  “Excuse me,” Charming said. “Are you with PETA?”

  He said it the way the animal rights group did—pee-tah—and the monkey’s mouth tightened into a little frown.

  “I’m with P.E.T.A.,” he snapped. “People for the Ethical Treatment—”

  “Of Archetypes, I know,” Charming said. “What’s this about unfair books?”

  The monkey stopped. “You read these things?”

  “Books?” Charming asked. “Of course. Why else would I be here?”

  “You’re being brainwashed,” the monkey said. “You don’t understand the evil being perpetrated by these horrible fairy tales.”

  “Fairy tales,” Charming repeated. He knew that “fairy tales” were how the Greater World absorbed the history of the kingdoms. Some of the tales were wrong, and some were not quite as wrong. They were about as accurate as the dime novels from the old Wild West, just a lot more popular.

  “That’s right,” the monkey said. “They’re lies. Damn lies. And they’ve got to be stopped.”

  “The fairy tales have to be stopped,” Charming repeated because he didn’t entirely understand this. “Fairy tales have been around for hundreds of years.”

  “That’s hundreds of years too long,” the monkey said. “We’ve got to put an end to this madness.”

  “By protesting a book fair?” Charming couldn’t keep the incredulousness out of his voice.

  “We have to start somewhere,” the monkey said, and loped even faster, so that he got ahead of Charming.

  Charming watched him go. He was confused. They thought they could—what? Stop the spread of fairy tales? Make fantastic literature go away?

  To what end?

  He needed to go back to the exhibition hall, but he found himself following the monkey instead.

  ***

  Mellie ended up with fifty-one protesters, fifty-two if she counted herself.

  The problem was that they were the bottom of the barrel. The selkie no one had heard of, a few flying monkeys, Rumplestiltskin (who liked to be part of any kind of political action), and Bluebeard, of all people. None of the other stepmothers, none of the witches, none of the crones. The magical fish had sent their regrets, claiming they would take part if she held the next protest on the Santa Monica Pier—as if she believed that, which she didn’t.

  It seemed like every time she tried to rally the troops, the troops scattered to the wind.

  Still, she decided to go through this, although she decided to shorten the protest to only a few hours for one day, instead of several hours over the life of the conference. Maybe she could get an interview—or better yet, some face time with some of the publishers and movie moguls. They would understand.

  Forty-five of her protestors were already marching through the hall, shouting Death to Fairy Tales! The rest were handing out flyers explaining PETA’s position on fairy tales and why they were evil, along with the URL of the website she had started back when she first conceived of the protest idea.

  So far, all the TV people had done when the marching started was shut the doors to the studios, so the sound of the protests didn’t drown out the panels. Once the flying monkey got back with the two extra signs she’d asked him to draw for her, she’d change the tone of the protest a little. She’d have the entire group yelling Book Unfair! which was bound to get someone’s attention.

  The hallway seemed smaller with fifty bodies in it, even if all fifty were of varying (and often smaller) sizes. She kept peering around the corner, waiting for that damn monkey, and she heaved a sigh of relief when she finally saw him.

  Although the relief turned to dread when she saw who was following the monkey. Charming. Looking…angry?

  For some reason she didn’t think any of the Charmings got angry.

  The monkey stopped when he saw her an
d handed her one of the signs. He started to go into an explanation of his lack of artistry—he really couldn’t do proper calligraphy with Magic Markers—but she didn’t care.

  Instead, she stepped past him and right in front of Charming.

  “You want to ban books?” he said, his voice strained. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Not ban them, exactly,” she said, hoping she sounded calm. “Just reduce the lies a bit.”

  “You think fairy tales are lies?” he said.

  “Well, you clearly don’t because—”

  “Oh,” he snapped, “don’t start that ‘people like you’ crap again. People like me know that happily ever after is a crock. I’m divorced, remember?”

  She bit her lower lip. She really hadn’t put that together.

  “You know what your problem is?” he said, his voice getting louder. “You don’t know how lucky you are.”

  His arrogance took her breath away. “Lucky?”

  “Lucky,” he said. “You’re beautiful, you’re smart, you’re successful enough to travel the Greater World, for heaven’s sake, and all you care about is what people think of you.”

  “I do not,” she said.

  “You do too.” He swept an arm toward the protestors. “Are you really an Archetype? Nowadays? Maybe a century ago, when women didn’t have as many opportunities. And maybe when you couldn’t choose your own identity. But who in this world knows who you are unless you point it out to them? And when you do, they think you’re crazy.”

  “You don’t know—”

  “I do know!” He was yelling now. “Of course I know. Do you know what some officious little American government prick did when I told him my real name after I passed my driving test? Do you?”

  She swallowed. “No.”

  “He laughed.” Charming lowered his voice. “He laughed and said my parents ought to be shot.”

  She smiled. She couldn’t help herself. She could picture that. She, at least, didn’t have to go around introducing herself as the Evil Stepmother because that wasn’t her real name. Never had been.

  “Go ahead,” he said, with some heat. “Laugh. But it’s not fun. I actually prefer Dave. No one laughs when I say my name is Dave.”

  “Hey!” A door opened near Mellie. A man peered out. “Can you people pipe down? We’re taping in here.”

  The nearest flying monkey—whose name she always forgot—raised his sign and waved it in the man’s face. “This book fair is unfair!” the monkey said. “It’s—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” the man said. “Someone is always publishing something someone else objects to. Whoopee ding dong do.”

  Then he slammed the door closed.

  Mellie stared at it for a moment. Her heart sank. All this planning, to be dismissed with a single whoopee ding dong do.

  The protestors had stopped marching and shouting.

  “What do you want us to do, Mellie?” the selkie asked.

  She didn’t know. She had no idea any more.

  So she shrugged. “Take a lunch break.”

  They set their signs down and bolted out of the hallway. She wondered if she’d ever see them again.

  She didn’t want to look at Charming. He would be laughing. He would gloat. Or he would be gone already.

  But she couldn’t help herself.

  She looked.

  He had an expression of compassion on his face. “It really bothers you what they think, doesn’t it?” he said softly.

  Her lower lip trembled, and she bit it. Hard. Evil stepmothers weren’t supposed to cry. Nor were they supposed to care about the opinion of a Charming.

  But here she was, on the verge of tears, in front of a Charming who actually appealed to her.

  “Back when I was thin and shapely and beautiful and oh, so young, I didn’t care,” she said. “But then more thin and shapely and beautiful and oh, so young things showed up and I stopped being important, and I would say something a little sarcastic, and I suddenly got called old and bitter and jealous, and it just went downhill, no matter what I did. Words hurt, Charming. Words hurt.”

  He nodded. “So you thought you could control the words.”

  “Isn’t that what you do with that golden voice of yours and that marvelously soothing manner? Don’t you control the words?”

  He gave her a rueful smile. “If I did, don’t you think I would have ended up with custody of my daughters?”

  Mellie looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time. He was very handsome. Elegant, not quite as trim as he could be, and just a hint of a bald spot that he might not even know about. A few lines around the eyes.

  Not as young as he used to be either.

  Seasoned.

  Like her.

  Only no one called him old and bitter and jealous.

  But he had called himself a nerd.

  “What are you doing here in the Greater World?” she asked.

  “Me?” his voice squeaked just a little. “Getting books. I told you. I read a lot.”

  She picked up his badge. It was purple, not for royalty, like she’d initially thought, but for booksellers. “You got an illegal badge?”

  “No,” he said. “I sell books back home.”

  “You’re a merchant?” She couldn’t quite keep the incredulousness from her tone.

  He straightened his shoulders as if by making himself taller he would become more powerful. “It’s an honorable profession.”

  He was being defensive. That surprised her. “I just thought being prince was profession enough.”

  “Maybe in the Greater World,” he said. “Here princes have to give speeches and do good works and have meetings with other princes. Back home, all I do is wait for my father to die.”

  He flushed a dark red.

  “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” he said.

  “I know what you mean,” she said. “You like it better here.”

  He nodded.

  “Why?”

  He waved his badge at her. “People don’t have any expectations of Dave the Bookseller. Except one.”

  “What’s that?” she asked, actually curious.

  “They expect him to know a lot about books.”

  ***

  And as he said that, he suddenly knew how to solve her problem. He held out his hand.

  “Come with me,” he said.

  She frowned at him, then she looked down at his hand as if she expected him to be holding a dagger. “Why?”

  “Because you’re going about this wrong,” he said.

  “Going about what wrong?” she asked.

  “Getting them to think better of you,” he said.

  “They need to know that we’re not evil. We’re just people, doing the best we could with a bad hand—”

  “I know,” he said. “I know what the perception is, and I know how wrong it is. But you can’t change it by telling people they’re wrong. That whole ‘people like you’ thing—”

  “I’m sorry I said that,” she said. “It’s rude.”

  “So are these placards,” he said. “They insult book people.”

  “They do?” she asked.

  “But I know another way to convince them,” he said.

  “A Charming way?” she asked.

  “Exactly,” he said, and grabbed her hand. “Come on.”

  ***

  He dragged her to the exhibition hall. She had only walked past it; she hadn’t looked inside. But she did now.

  It was bigger than any castle audience hall she had ever seen, and it was crammed full of booths and books and people. More people than she could ever imagine.

  One of the security guards looked for her badge, but somehow Charming got her past him. Something about an assistant. She didn’t listen closely. She was too awed by the size of this hall.

  She had no idea how many books there were.

  “What do you think of vampires?” Charming asked as they hurried down an aisle.

  It was such
a non sequetor that she actually stopped. “Vampires?” she said.

  “Or werewolves,” he said. “Or zombies.”

  She shrugged. “Zombies don’t exist,” she said.

  “Okay, then. Vampires. Werewolves. Creatures of the night. You think they’re misunderstood?”

  “I think they’re scary,” she said. “The handful I’ve met anyway. Predators. Real predators who think of us as prey.”

  “Yet they’re half human, right?”

  “Werewolves are,” she said. “Technically vampires used to be human, and they have some vestiges—”

  “So that’s a yes,” Charming said. “They care about their reputation too. About the time we started dealing with those Grimm people, they had to deal with someone named Stoker. He let the Great World know about them—”

  “So?” she said.

  “And the Greater World heard how evil they are,” Charming said.

  “And you think that’s bad?” she asked. She didn’t think so. Vampires scared her more than werewolves who were, at least, predictable.

  “What I think is irrelevant,” Charming said. “But what the Greater World thinks, now that matters.”

  He swept his arm toward a wall of books.

  “Behold,” he said.

  She looked at what he was pointing at. Book after book after book about vampires. Not about how evil they were or how dangerous. But how sexy they were. There was even a movie magazine dedicated to the rise of the sexy vampire, and movie posters with the vampires looking longingly at young women—not like they were going to eat the women, but like they were in love with them.

  “You’re kidding, right?” she said.

  “No,” Charming said. “Vampires are all the rage now. Teenagers dress up like them. Prince Charming is passé. Now they all want to fall in love with Edward.”

  “Edward?” she asked.

  “Long story,” he said. “Suffice to say that the vampires used to be as angry about their own image as you are.”

  “So what did they do?” she asked.

  “They started writing.”