Utterly Charming

by Kristine Grayson

  The yelling didn’t stop, but the hand turned and applied pressure to the lid. Then another hand popped out, followed by the most gorgeous head Nora had ever seen, and a pair of creamy white shoulders that she had once thought only existed in airbrushed magazine photos. A dress of homespun material hung off the edges of two perfectly sized breasts, just barely hiding the nipples.

  The woman—and she was quite a woman—braced her hands on the sides of the coffin and squeezed the rest of herself out. After she escaped, she collapsed on the edge of the shag carpet and took several large breaths.

  Nora was shaking. The woman had black hair the color of night, lips so red that they looked as if they’d been painted, and eyes the color of an angry sea. She was the perfect complement to Blackstone, the yin to his yang as the cliché went, and suddenly Nora understood why he had spent a thousand years trying to protect her.

  The woman had gotten control of her breathing. She looked up at the ceiling, then at the windows, and then she rolled, looking out the back end of the microbus.

  Nora tried to imagine the view through the eyes of a woman who had just gone from the Dark Ages to the computer age in the space of a single night’s sleep. Nothing would be familiar. There was asphalt on the ground, a Lexus (how would the pre-medieval mind translate that?), the storage units with their metal doors glinting in the morning sun. Even the air had to smell different. It probably, if Nora were honest with herself, smelled better.

  The woman turned and in a voice so musical, it made Nora wince, asked—something completely indecipherable. It sounded like Danish, only Nora knew Danish, and it didn’t have any words like the ones the woman was using.

  “I’m—I’m sorry,” Nora said. “Could you try again?”

  The woman pushed herself onto her elbows, then sat up. There was real fear in her eyes. She was understanding enough of this to know she was in a strange place with someone who didn’t speak her language. She leaned forward, earnestly it seemed to Nora, and said the same thing she had said before, only much, much slower, as if she were speaking to a very elderly person or a very dumb one.

  The language still sounded like mutilated Danish.

  Then Nora remembered the letter. “Wait,” she said, reaching into her back pocket. Step Two required her to repeat some words, words that clearly weren’t in English.

  Nora wrapped her mouth around the letters, hoping she was pronouncing things clearly. The woman frowned at her. She started to speak again. The more panicked she got, the more her language sounded like baby gibberish. She reached for Nora just as Nora finished.

  “…help me?” the woman said.

  “Oh thank God,” Nora said. “I was beginning to think I needed to find someone who spoke Norse.”

  “I can understand you!” the woman said.

  Nora nodded. “You’re Emma?”

  “Yes,” the woman said. “How do you know me?”

  “I’ll tell you what I can in a moment,” Nora said. She ran through Steps Three through Five. They all required her to speak unpronounceable words, except for Step Five, which included an obscene gesture that didn’t seem to bother Emma. None of these other steps seemed to have any discernible effect.

  When she was done, she looked up from the paper to find Emma staring at her.

  “You do not have any magic powers, do you?”

  Nora shook her head.

  “Yet you have me.”

  “It’s a long story,” Nora said. “But first I think we should get you out of here. You want to take anything with you?”

  She peered into the coffin to see if there was anything there. It had the imprint of Emma’s body against the glass, as if all the time she had spent there left an indelible mark.

  Emma shuddered. “No,” she said. “I am very glad to leave that thing.”

  “You were unconscious the whole time, weren’t you?” Nora asked, remembering her dream and not wishing that suffocating feeling on anyone.

  “I guess so,” Emma said. “Since the last thing I remember was Aethelstan—” And then she blushed. The blush went from her cheeks down to the tops of her breasts and looked as if someone had faintly touched her beautiful skin with a complimentary shade of rouge. Another blusher. Only this time, it didn’t make Nora feel as if she’d found a kindred spirit. Instead she felt as if she’d found blushing perfection. When Nora blushed, her face looked blotchy for hours afterwards.

  “He was kissing you, right?” Nora asked.

  Emma looked at her. “How did you know?”

  “It’s all part of the story. Come on. This is no place to talk.” Nora climbed off the wheel well and onto the pavement. She took Emma’s hands and helped her down as well. Emma was shorter than Nora, which was unusual, and very delicate.

  “How old are you?” Nora asked.

  “Twenty,” Emma said and blushed again. “I know it is old, but—”

  “It’s not old,” Nora said, although by Dark Ages standards, it was probably elderly, especially for a woman to be unmarried. Nora felt positively ancient at thirty-five, and she wasn’t the one who had been in a coma for a thousand years. “I’m going to take you to my carriage. It has magical properties. Just ride with me, and I’ll explain what I can later.”

  “What is this place?” Emma asked.

  “A long way from where you grew up,” Nora said.

  “And how did you find me?”

  “I’ll tell you when we get somewhere else,” Nora said, opening the door to the Lexus. She extended a hand, as a butler would do, indicating that Emma should get inside.

  After a moment’s hesitation, she did, and Nora found herself admiring the girl’s guts. If Nora woke up in a place as strange as this one clearly was to Emma, she would be completely freaked out and letting everyone know about it.

  Emma sat down, ran her hand on the seat as if she couldn’t believe the material, then frowned at the glass. Nora swallowed hard. Things had just become a lot more complicated.

  She turned, closed the back of the microbus, and heard a small squeal behind her. Emma had her hand to her mouth, watching. The sound must have startled her. Nora nodded once, in reassurance, and then grabbed the door to the garage and pulled it closed. That noise really alarmed Emma, who cringed in her seat. Nora took the lock and replaced it, then she came to Emma’s side of the car.

  “This carriage is like nothing you’ve seen. It’ll feel strange to ride in it,” she said, hoping that her words would be enough.

  “There are no horses,” Emma whispered.

  “That’s right,” Nora said and closed the door gently. Emma put her hands on the dash, then removed them as if she had been burned. She was touching everything. It almost seemed like she was a blind woman trying to get her bearings. Nora felt incredible sorrow at this woman’s confusion. How would she ever adjust?

  Nora went to the driver’s side and got in. “We call this a car,” she said.

  “The carriage?”

  “Yes,” Nora said as she put the keys in the ignition. She had the forethought to turn the radio off. “It makes a lot of noise, but it allows you to go fast.”

  Then she turned the key. The car rumbled to a start. Emma put her hands over her ears. Nora sighed and was about to put on her own seat belt when she realized that Emma wasn’t wearing hers. Of course. Nora reached across, excused herself as she did so, and buckled Emma in. Emma’s eyes widened, and she started to squirm, when Nora said, “I have to wear one too.”

  She leaned back and put hers on quickly, hoping that would calm Emma. Emma watched, her lower lip trembling. Then she touched the seat again, obviously feeling the vibration of the running motor.

  “We are not moving,” she said.

  “I haven’t started driving yet.” Nora put the car in gear and eased out of the storage area. Emma put her hands on the dash as if she expected to be killed. If driving this slowly made her nervous, then going fifty-five miles an hour on the freeway would terrify her.

  Emma gazed out
the front window, like a deer caught in headlights, as Nora turned onto the road. The color had drained from Emma’s face. Her fingers gripped the dash tighter and tighter, making Nora wonder if they would leave dents.

  Nora executed a series of left turns until she reached the interstate, and then she merged, ignoring Emma’s whimpers of fright. The girl sat, her back straight, her arms rigid, as if she expected to crash at any moment.

  Nora couldn’t watch her. At this time of day, Nora had to pay attention to the road. She toyed for a moment with taking Emma to her office, then decided that would be a bad idea. Even though Ruthie had seen Sancho and Blackstone all those years ago, seeing was different than actually experiencing those strange and magical events. Trying to explain Emma would be next to impossible. At the moment, Nora needed to do this on her own.

  She took the exit that led to her loft. She hadn’t sold it, as Max had wanted her to do when they got married. Maybe she had always known it wasn’t going to work. After she’d given him the ultimatum, she had moved back into the loft and found she loved living there more than she had ever loved their big home on the hills overlooking the Columbia River. In the years since she left, the downtown loft had become chic, and she could sell it for five times what she had paid for it, a fact Max had reminded her of often. But she was glad that she hadn’t.

  Not that any of this mattered to Emma. All that mattered now was to get Emma off the road and someplace where she could calm down.

  Nora turned on her street and parked curbside. She had the car off and her seat belt unlatched before Emma even moved.

  “We did not fly,” Emma said.

  “No,” Nora said.

  “But we traveled forever.”

  “A long distance,” Nora said. By horse and cart standards, anyway.

  “Everything is so strange,” Emma said, and there was sadness in her voice.

  “I know,” Nora said. “Stay put.”

  She got out, then went to the passenger side, helped Emma with the seat belt, and then had her get out of the car. Emma stood on the sidewalk, pressing her toes against the concrete as if she were amazed that the ground didn’t move.

  “What happened to dirt?” she asked.

  “We still have it,” Nora said, locking and closing the car door. “But we like to cover it up now.”

  She took Emma’s arm and decided to forgo the elevator. They climbed the stairs until they reached Nora’s loft.

  Emma was shaking, even though she probably looked, to anyone who saw them, like a woman who hadn’t given up her hippie past and was a bit uncomfortable being in the city. Only Nora could feel the bottled-up terror. Emma’s muscles were rigid, her spine so straight that Nora felt like a false move would break her. Nora had to get Emma inside, in a protected space, and then figure out how to care for her.

  Damn Sancho. Damn Blackstone. They had known this would happen.

  I expect you to find competent help for any problem that might arise.

  Competent help. Yeah, right. Who would know how to deal with a woman who had been in a coma for a thousand years?

  They reached the top floor and the small corridor that was little more than a catwalk over the lower parts of the building. Emma was looking down at the mesh, watching her feet, her trembling growing worse.

  Nora saw the man in her doorway first. Her heart, traitor that it was, leaped, and she had to suppress a smile of greeting. Intellectually, she was angry at this man. Emotionally, she wanted to throw herself in his arms.

  Instead, she stopped, and Emma stopped obediently, still looking down.

  Blackstone was leaning against the door, arms crossed. He wore a loose shirt and faded blue jeans, but his cowboy boots were the same and still trimmed with real silver. His face looked no different. The last ten years hadn’t aged him at all. Still gorgeous. Still guarded.

  When he saw Nora staring at him, he smiled slightly. “I see you found her,” he said.

  Emma looked up at the sound of his voice. She shook herself free of Nora’s grip and ran toward him. “Aethelstan!” she cried as she launched herself into his arms, just as Nora had fantasized about doing a moment before.

  Blackstone held Emma, but his gaze hadn’t left Nora’s. His look measured her, took in her reaction—although she tried to have none—and then, slowly, deliberately, he brought a hand up and cradled the back of Emma’s head, pulling her close. He didn’t kiss her, but he ran his hands along her in an attempt to comfort her. Apparently he knew how terrified she was.

  Nora looked away. It was a private moment for them, a moment she should have no part of. She did wish, however, that they’d move away from her door.

  As if he heard her thought, Blackstone stood and eased Emma aside, still keeping a hand around her waist. He was looking at Nora again.

  “Did you follow my instructions?” he asked.

  “All of them,” she said. “Even though after Step Two they seemed to have no effect.”

  His smile was small. “The others you couldn’t see,” he said. “Immunization spells, so that she wouldn’t catch any modern diseases. Muscle strengthening spells, so that her long sleep didn’t debilitate her. Adaptation spells that prevent the worst of culture shock—”

  “Long sleep?” Emma asked, looking first at him and then at Nora.

  His lips tightened. He frowned at Nora. “You didn’t explain?”

  “I got her out of there first, figuring she should at least be comfortable.” Nora pushed past him. The brief touch of her shoulder against his chest burned her. God, why did he have to be so attractive? “Which I still think. Besides, I don’t think it was part of my job description to explain what you did.”

  “Aethelstan?” Emma asked.

  “Inside,” he said, and Nora could have sworn that he was biting back anger.

  Nora unlocked her door and held it open. Blackstone pushed Emma forward, one hand on her back, and then followed her inside. Emma stopped, staring at the room as if it too were as alien as everything else. Which it probably was.

  Nora had remodeled the loft just before moving back in. She had had an architect simplify the design and add a shower in the half bath. The living room was sunken slightly and done in reds and silvers; the kitchen which could be seen from the door, was done in chrome. The staircase had been redone also in chrome and steel, and her bedroom, walled off with a stylish silver screen, was barely visible above. Sunlight poured in from the open windows, making the silver and chrome sparkle.

  “I would have expected something else from you,” Blackstone said.

  “Warm and kitschy?” Nora asked as she walked to Emma.

  “Yeah,” he said, sounding not that certain. “I guess.”

  Nora put a hand on Emma’s arm and led her farther inside. “I know it’s not what you’re used to—”

  “Nothing is,” Emma whispered.

  “Come in anyway,” Nora said. “And let me get you something. Water, maybe, or even some tea?”

  “Tea,” Emma said.

  “Remember we didn’t have caffeinated teas until the British East India Company,” Blackstone said softly.

  “I think I can find some chamomile,” Nora said. She helped Emma to the couch. “Would you like anything to eat?”

  “She won’t need anything for a day or two. That’s when the magic wears off.”

  Emma looked at her skirt, smoothing it as she sat. Nora kept a hand on her arm. “Emma,” she repeated. “Would you like anything to eat?”

  Emma glanced at Blackstone, and then shook her head.

  “You don’t have to do what he says,” Nora said. “You can do what you want. Are you hungry?”

  “Not yet,” Emma said and looked down.

  This time, it was Nora’s turn to glare at Blackstone. He shrugged and sat beside Emma on the couch. She had to put out a hand to brace herself, as the cushions bent beneath his weight. He put his arm on the back cushion, behind Emma, as if he were guarding her, and Nora suppressed a sigh. How man
y times had she imagined him in this loft, sitting just like that, his arm behind her? Too many. He hadn’t left her mind, not for a single day, even during her marriage to Max.

  Nora went into the kitchen. She took the kettle from the back burner and filled it, deciding to put some cookies out anyway. Emma had seemed interested in food but had been more interested in not displeasing Blackstone.

  The swine.

  They were talking softly in the living room. Nora caught only a few words.

  “…long sleep?” Emma asked.

  Nora peeked around her cabinets. Blackstone had his head bowed. “It was Ealhswith,” he said. “Remember the day you snuck to my cottage?”

  “And we kissed,” Emma said, raising a hand to his lips.

  The gesture made Nora look away. She went back into the kitchen and pulled open a cupboard, looking for cookies or crackers or something that might look familiar to Emma. Probably nothing would—except bread or fruit. And Nora wasn’t even sure what kind of fruit was native to Emma’s part of the world. England, Blackstone had led her to believe. Did they have apple orchards in England?

  Nora shook her head at her own ignorance. Funny how she could go through life and not know how other pasts, other cultures worked. It had never been relevant before, and the man in the other room had failed to inform her that it would be relevant when Emma awoke.

  “…to sleep?” Emma’s voice rose over the rattle of the teakettle as the water warmed. “Why?”

  “I didn’t put you to sleep. Ealhswith did. Her spell would have killed you.”

  “But you did not reverse it.”

  “Hell, Emma, I was just a boy. I did what I could.”

  “But you are no longer a boy. Surely at some point you could have reversed the spell.”

  You go girl, Nora mouthed. She smiled to herself, and as she did, she found the tea bread she had bought on a whim a day ago. She began to cut it into small slices.

  “I didn’t always have you. Ealhswith—”

  “But when you did?”

  “It’s more complicated than that. Ealhswith—”

  “You should have woken me.”

  “It might have killed you.”