Utterly Charming

by Kristine Grayson

  Rules, legalities, and cultural norms. Ealhswith crossed her arms. Rules, legalities, and norms. All the things she absolutely hated. But as she had learned over the years, things she could use to her advantage.

  So young Miss Barr wanted to use mortal legal arguments to fight a magic battle, did she? Ealhswith smiled. Why not? It could be done.

  Not if she followed all the rules. But most of them. And what were rules for if not to be broken? Especially if a person didn’t get caught.

  Ealhswith laughed her cruel villainess’s laugh, the one she had been practicing since she saw her first film noir in the late 1940s. A cold, calculating laugh.

  She was an expert at bending the rules, an expert at not getting caught. After all, if she could trick the Fates, she could trick a simple little mortal court. It would be a pleasure to beat that pesky attorney at her own game to get Emma back—and to rip out Blackstone’s heart in the process.

  * * *

  Chapter 6

  After a lunch conversation in which Nora’s mother tried to explain China (“it is the largest country on Earth—” “How do you know this?” “Because—oh, I don’t know”), its location in relationship to theirs (“It’s in the Far East.” “And we are where?” “In America.” “Which is where?”), and its regions and cuisines (“Now Hunan is the hot one, right, Nora?” “I don’t know, Mother.” “And that is China?” “No, it’s Chinese.” “Then why do you not call it Chinese?”), Nora fled the loft, only to have to return a moment later for her car keys and purse. When she walked back in, her mother was explaining how rice was grown (“in paddies” “which are?”) and Nora just shook her head, took the purse and keys, and left again before she could get sucked back into the conversation.

  As she took the stairs down, she wished, she really did, that Emma had opted for at least part of the magic spell which gave her the history of the world. With all these simple questions and the amount of things she had to learn, this was going to get real tiring, real fast.

  Halfway to the office, Nora realized she was still wearing her filthy sweatshirt and jeans. She thought for a moment about driving home then decided against it. The last thing she wanted to explain was why she needed different clothes for work.

  Instead she stopped at the Saks downtown and bought herself a new suit. It was made of linen, and she wore a light pink blouse with it and even indulged in a pair of Italian leather shoes. She deserved it, and somehow she managed to make the entire purchase in only a matter of minutes.

  She left the store wearing the suit, carrying her grimy clothes in the Saks bag. From there, the drive to her office was short. She was still in the same building she had been in ten years before, but she had taken over one of the penthouse suites. Her law firm was no longer just hers; she had junior partners and baby lawyers and law clerks, so many people bustling about that if she wasn’t careful, she would call one by the wrong name. As she pulled into the familiar parking garage, she found herself thinking what a difference ten years made.

  Ruthie had stayed with her, using part of the money from the first bizarre episode with Blackstone for night classes in business management and in legal secretary training. Somewhere in that first six months, she dropped the deadbeat boyfriend, who then found some other poor schmo to support him. Ruthie started dating a series of self-made men, all of whom owned their own businesses, and all of whom eventually wanted to hire her away from Nora. Ruthie had declined offers of jobs and offers of marriage, for which Nora was profoundly grateful. She never would have thought, after their rocky start, that Ruthie would become indispensable. And right now, Nora wanted to see Ruthie, to help her get this strange case under way.

  Ruthie had her own office inside the three-room suite that was Nora’s private space. Nora had to pass reception, where the latest college intern sat, overwhelmed by the ringing phones and the growing mass of paper, and where the regular receptionist kept everything in order. The receptionist had been with Nora for eight years. She was a solid, unimaginative woman whose friendliness was her greatest asset. She waved at Nora, who nodded back, and then she answered a few phones herself, clearly knowing where her paycheck came from.

  Nora walked behind the big oak reception area, grabbed a thick wad of paper which were messages that had accumulated since the last time Ruthie grabbed them, and then headed through the waiting area (filled with nice plants and current magazines) into the heart of the law office. Through double glass doors, clerks and legal secretaries bustled past the open files and library shelves. Inside one of the meeting rooms, one of the junior partners was holding a conference with several older men in conservative black suits. In another meeting room, two baby lawyers were seated side by side, law books open before them, files scattered across the table.

  The offices were full and more than one attorney was hurrying out the back, briefcase stuffed, and looking harried. All those attorneys, all those billable hours. She was the only senior partner, and it was her firm. Even though the junior partners got a percentage of the firm’s revenue, no one got as much as she did. She knew this was one of the reasons Max was playing hardball in the divorce; no matter how much he made defending the guilty, his income would never match hers. She could retire now, leave the management in the hands of the ablest junior partner, and make a good living for the rest of her life. She chose not to do that. Every morning—except this morning—she was here, heading the staff meeting, keeping track of cases and clients, and making certain everything ran smoothly. That she hadn’t been here this morning felt odd, as if the entire world were out of sync. Which, in some ways, it was.

  The law clerks greeted her with nervous head-bobs. The two main secretaries all looked surprised to see her walking in so late. If Nora took a day off, she took the full day. But she rarely did. While she worked fewer paying cases, she still spent most of her time here. She managed difficult clients, and she did a lot of pro bono work, representing clients—mostly domestic abuse cases that revolved around children or child custody—who couldn’t pay. Some of those cases broke her heart. Others redeemed her notion of the way that human beings cared for each other even in times of crisis.

  And that, more than anything, was probably why she had taken on Emma. She had seen in the middle of all that turmoil, the potential for one young woman to get hurt. In many ways, Emma was already hurt; by all the lost time, all the lost years. She needed a chance to get her feet beneath her before she made her own choices, which was exactly what most of those women Nora had represented needed before they could figure out how to take care of themselves and their children.

  “Boy, will Ruthie be glad to see you,” said Steven, one of the junior partners, as he passed, laptop under his arm. “She’s been breathing fire all morning.”

  “It’s afternoon,” Nora said.

  “It’s gotten worse,” he said with a grin.

  “Thanks for the warning.”

  Nora squared her shoulders and walked through the narrow corridor that led to her office suite. She opened the door, thinking how much this little setup resembled the one she had started with several floors below, and barely registered the client sitting in the corner. Instead she looked at Ruthie.

  Breathing fire was probably a bad analogy. Turning the room frigid with her chilly attitude was better. Ruthie had cleaned up in ten years. Her power suit was more expensive than the one Nora was wearing, and her jewelry was tasteful gold chains with matching diamond studs. Her long hair had been tamed and pulled back, and she’d stopped wearing contacts, deciding long ago that glasses gave her more authority.

  Ruthie pulled those glasses down her nose and looked at Nora like a one-room school teacher disciplining the class clown. “If you were going to take a morning off, you should have warned me. The entire office is behind because of you. It took the staff fifteen minutes to decide which junior partner should lead the meeting; I had to type up minutes special for you—”

  Nora knew that part wasn’t true. One of the other s
ecretaries had done it. Ruthie had learned to delegate tasks like that years ago.

  “—I canceled four appointments, let Mrs. Seldayne cry on my silk blouse, and thanked the good Lord that your court appearance for that sweet three-year-old and his wretched mother was yesterday and not today. You have more messages than I care to count, there is some kind of financial crisis in accounting that needs your fullest attention now or so I’m told, and this so-called gentleman refuses to leave my office and wait where all the other clients do.”

  That last part made Nora pay attention. No one ever got the better of Ruthie. Not the new and improved Ruthie. Nora turned.

  Blackstone was sitting in one of the uncomfortable office chairs Ruthie had bought for the express purpose of making certain that no one sat in her office very long. At first glance, Blackstone seemed comfortable—his long legs were extended, his slender hands clasped over his flat belly, much as they had been in Nora’s office years ago—but at second glance, it became clear that he was holding the position through sheer willpower. Another battle of wills, this one with Ruthie. The man was the most stubborn person Nora had ever met.

  “I don’t have time for you today, Mr. Blackstone,” Nora said. “We had our discussion earlier.”

  He stood, shaking one leg slightly, as if it had fallen asleep. “All I need is five minutes, Nora. Please—”

  She thumbed through her messages, even though he was probably the only person on the planet she could never ignore. Still, she managed to focus on the messages. At least half were marked “urgent.” “And I don’t recall ever giving you permission to use my first name, Mr. Blackstone.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said and sounded so contrite that she actually looked at him. That was a mistake. Her gaze got caught on his silver eyes with their long lashes. It took a moment before she could break the look.

  “I am very busy, Mr. Blackstone.”

  “Where’s Emma?” he asked.

  “In my care, as I promised she would be,” Nora said. “That’s all you need to know.”

  Ruthie sat up. She’d seen variations of this drama played out in this office countless times. To her, this must have seemed like a domestic abuse situation. Nora gave her a small “wait” signal with her left hand.

  “You can’t continue to take care of her yourself. You know this is foolishness,” he said.

  “I know nothing of the sort, Mr. Blackstone. Now, if you’ll let me by—”

  “Nora—Miss Barr—Mrs. Farnsworth—”

  “It’s always been Barr,” Nora said.

  “Please. I—” He extended his hands and then dropped them, as if he knew that pleading with her would do no good. He shook his head and started for the door.

  As he passed her, Nora got the distinct sense that he truly was upset, that this was not an act he was putting on for her benefit. For the first time since she had met him, Blackstone needed help.

  “All right, Mr. Blackstone,” she said. “You have fifteen minutes. No more. Ruthie will let us know when your time is up.”

  She nodded to Ruthie, who looked surprised. No one had ever convinced Nora to change her plans before.

  She took the other pile of messages off Ruthie’s desk and opened the oak door that separated Ruthie’s office from hers. Both offices had connecting doors to a conference room that wasn’t used as much as Nora had thought it would be.

  As she always did when she stepped inside her office, she paused to look at the bridges crossing the Columbia River and the buildings and mountains beyond. No city was prettier than Portland, and she didn’t tire of looking at it. The beautiful day continued, and for once, the sunshine didn’t bring with it the haze that had been growing with each summer. Everything was fresh and clear, as if the air were chilly instead of hot.

  Blackstone stopped behind her. She could feel his warmth against her back, smell that scent she had noticed on him years ago, a scent of leather and something exotic. She stepped away from him, mostly to be out of range of that intoxicating smell, and headed toward her desk, the same oak desk she had always had, the one her father had given her before he died. It almost looked small in this large room, but it was the one thing that reminded her of who she was, where she had come from, and what she was doing here. It was that desk that made her realize a woman could spend her entire life chasing money and die with cash in her hands and nothing else. She decided she didn’t want to die that way, and so she began her pro bono work, quietly and with great fervor. It became the centerpiece of her life as her marriage to Max had fallen apart.

  “Close the door, Mr. Blackstone,” she said as she put the messages on her desk. She tapped the intercom and asked Ruthie to hold her calls. Then she turned her attention to him.

  He still had his hand on the door, as if he weren’t certain whether or not he should come into the room. His hair was messed, his shirt was rumpled, and he had an expression on his face that was something Nora had never seen before. It looked as if he were trying to keep his normal aura of bemused calm but was too upset to do so. The mask kept slipping, revealing a younger, softer man, a man she could like. A lot.

  She kept her voice cool as she said, “Have a seat, Mr. Blackstone.”

  He came closer but did not sit down. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

  “What wasn’t?”

  “Her waking. I thought—” he stopped himself, shook his head, as if the sentence wasn’t worth finishing.

  “That she’d run into your arms?” Nora asked. “She did.”

  “I know,” he said. “But I thought she’d take the spell and come with me. I didn’t expect her to be so angry.”

  “She said you didn’t know each other long.”

  He put his hands on the back of the chair, almost as though he needed its support. “It seemed like a long time then. When you’re young, you know.”

  “She’s still young,” Nora said.

  He nodded, once, the movement curt. “It’s like I don’t know what to do now that she’s awake.”

  “The fight with Ealhswith had become everything, hadn’t it?”

  “No.” He pulled the chair back then walked around it and sat down. His posture was rigid, not the pretend relaxation he had had outside. The mask was completely gone from his face. This man was open to her, his eyes wide, his mouth mobile. He looked lost. As lost as Emma.

  He raised his hands, cupped them, and kept them apart, as if forming an imaginary box with his fingers. “It’s as if she wasn’t a person anymore.”

  Nora waited. This was important, although she wasn’t sure why.

  “And yet I knew she was. I always had this idea that she and I would walk off into the sunset.”

  “Once you got rid of Ealhswith.”

  “Once we had our own life.”

  Nora threaded her fingers together. “But you’ve had a life. For a long time. Without Emma.”

  “I know,” he said. “I’m beginning to realize it.”

  “So is she,” Nora said.

  “My God,” he said, bowing his head and sliding his hands into his hair, messing it further. “What we did to her, I didn’t realize—” He raised his head. His hair was standing out in tufts. He looked like a little boy, a little boy who had just discovered that the world didn’t work the way he wanted it to. “You have to let me see her. I need to make this right.”

  “What would you do?” Nora asked. “Send her back to her own time?”

  He shook his head.

  “Give her a thousand years of false memories?”

  He closed his eyes.

  “Put her back to sleep?”

  “No,” he said, standing. “No.”

  “What can you do?” Nora asked again.

  “Make her forget,” he said. “That’s the best I can do.”

  “What would she forget?”

  “Everything,” he whispered.

  “Everything?” Nora asked.

  He shrugged. “Or everything since she awoke. She could reme
mber her childhood, her past.”

  “Then she’d still be confused by this world,” Nora said. “All you would do was make certain she had forgotten her anger at you. You’re better off having her forget her name, her background, her world.”

  He shoved his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and bowed his head. “That’s not a solution either, is it?”

  “Not if what she tells me is true,” Nora said. “If she will come into her own magic someday. And then, of course, there’s Ealhswith to deal with.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I don’t think magic can solve this,” Nora said.

  He frowned, as if he had never encountered anything like that before. “Still,” he said, “she needs help, and I don’t think you can give it.”

  “You can’t,” Nora said. “She’s afraid of you.”

  “Afraid?” He turned, startled. All the power she had felt from him, all the charming warmth that had been so much a part of him, was gone. This was Blackstone, the man behind the games. She longed to reach out to him, but she didn’t dare.

  “Yes,” Nora said gently. “Think of what you’ve done to her, you and Ealhswith.”

  He sank back into the chair.

  “You took everything from her. Her past, her future. Everything she was familiar with, and you’ve replaced it with nothing. You’re not even someone she recognizes.”

  “But she ran to me,” he said.

  “She says you look older. Angrier. She says you’re someone else.” Nora rubbed her thumbs together, then stopped when she realized she was making her own nervousness visible. “You are, you know. Ten years changes a person. I can’t think what a thousand would do.”

  He rubbed his hands along his thighs, then grabbed his knees and leaned forward like a supplicant who wasn’t sure if he should humble himself too much. “She was supposed to be my soul mate. She is my destiny. That’s what they said.”