Charming Blue

by Kristine Grayson

  “God,” he said and buried his face in his hands. Then he realized what he had done and pulled his hands away.

  And he had told her to come back. With papers.

  She would just have to leave them at the desk. He couldn’t take the risk of seeing her again.

  She was in his brain, and that was dangerous.

  No woman had been in his brain for a long, long time. He hadn’t allowed it.

  He stood up, shoved his hands in his pockets, and stared at the pool. The water was completely smooth, the hot sun falling on it and making it very bright. He needed a drink. He needed something to separate himself from his brain, to forget.

  Maybe he should leave here. Maybe he should go back into his defense. It had worked for centuries, in one way or another.

  But if he left here, he wouldn’t be monitored. No one would keep an eye on him.

  And she was in his brain.

  Where the pain began.

  If he allowed it. If he didn’t have help preventing it.

  He didn’t know how to forget her, but he had to. Somehow. He had to pretend this afternoon hadn’t happened at all.

  Chapter 7

  Early the following morning, Blue stopped near the bottom of the stairs in the main building. Many patients were just coming back from breakfast, and some were heading to a group therapy session. When he had first come here years ago, he found it fascinating how many familiar faces he saw, faces from billboards or album covers or movie posters.

  Now he was more or less used to it, and he was unfazed by it. Most of the famous looked as normal as everyone else when they weren’t wearing piles of makeup or had someone doing their hair. Their skin was blotchy, their hair ragged, and their clothing sometimes as ratty as the stuff he wore when he was drunk. Only they wore it as a fashion statement; he wore it as a people repellent.

  He didn’t nod to anyone. He never socialized, and he almost never talked to anyone outside of a group session. (Hell, he never talked to them in group either.) Some people thought he was famous because of the charisma that went with his charm powers, and they simply figured he was aloof so that he wouldn’t be recognized.

  He didn’t disabuse them of that. And, if the truth be told, he was famous, just not in the way that they thought.

  This morning he had dressed with even more care than usual. He had gotten up with the sun, done an extra two miles on his run, and showered, discovering that he was still too early for his usual breakfast. He had shaved and picked out a shirt that brought out the blue in his eyes before he realized what he was doing.

  He wanted to impress Jodi Walters. It was a natural human response, one that he hadn’t had in years (decades, no, centuries) and one that scared him more than her arrival had.

  He changed into a comfortable pair of threadbare blue jeans and a mustard-colored shirt that made him seem sallow, a shirt that he had arrived in and some brave soul in the center’s laundry had cleaned for him. Then he had mussed up his hair, wished he hadn’t shaved, and ate something with onions for breakfast.

  That was the best he could do.

  Until he figured out how to solve this problem.

  He crossed the main floor to the administration desk. The person behind the desk was female, which made his palms sweat. He wiped them on his thighs, then made himself focus.

  Charm. He needed to be charming, which shouldn’t be hard, but he was so out of practice that he wasn’t quite sure how to do it.

  He put his elbows on the desk, partly to keep his hands from shaking, regretting the onions now. He made himself smile.

  “Hey,” he said softly.

  “Mr. Franklin,” the woman behind the desk said with more warmth than he’d ever heard her use with other patients. John Franklin was the name he had chosen years ago because it wasn’t memorable, but it wasn’t an obvious fake name like Carter or Smith might be. “What can I do for you?”

  “Um,” he said, trying not to meet her gaze, but also trying not to be conspicuous about it. It wasn’t that he found her attractive—far from it; she was one of those doughy women who had given up long ago. But he didn’t know if every woman he paid attention to was at risk from him or just the ones he found interesting. “I, um, wondered if it would be possible to send someone to the guest building. Someone is supposed to drop off something for me and I didn’t tell her where and—”

  “Never mind, he’ll get it himself.” Dr. Hargrove took Blue’s arm and pulled him away from the desk. “Thanks.”

  “S-s-sure,” the woman said.

  Blue let Dr. Hargrove pull him to the center of the room, and then planted his feet. “I’m not going to see her.”

  Dr. Hargrove looked like a man who had just arrived at work. His cheeks still had razor-scrape, and his hair looked newly combed. He had on a bit too much cologne which, Blue knew from experience, would fade as the day went on.

  “Yes, you are going to see her,” Dr. Hargrove said. “Look at the beneficial effect she has already had on you. You voluntarily spoke to another woman.”

  Blue closed his eyes, feeling frustration well. If only he could explain to Dr. Hargrove what the real problem was. Then imagine what would happen: screaming, mayhem, lockdown (“You’re insane. Bluebeard is fiction”), or arrest (“Officer, he’s admitted to murdering women for years”). Blue could probably get out of both, but he didn’t want to go through the steps in between.

  Dr. Hargrove shook him slightly. “Come on. She’s already here.”

  Great, Blue thought. Just great.

  He opened his eyes. “Please, don’t make me.”

  “We all have to do things we don’t like,” Dr. Hargrove said. “Although for the life of me, I can’t understand why you don’t want to spend a few minutes in the company of a beautiful woman.”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” Blue muttered.

  “Try me,” Dr. Hargrove said.

  Blue shook his head.

  “Well, then we’re going to the other building,” Dr. Hargrove said.

  “You’re coming with me?”

  “Not to see her,” Dr. Hargrove said. “She wants to keep what you’re discussing private. Any reason for that?”

  Magic, fairy tales, the existence of whole other worlds. “Not that I know of,” Blue said.

  “Still,” Dr. Hargrove said, “she made the request and I’m going to honor it, so let’s go.”

  And with that, he dragged Blue out the back exit, toward the pool, and to the guest building. Blue stumbled along, trying to figure out how he could keep the meeting short.

  Chapter 8

  Paper. He said he wanted paper.

  Jodi had been irritated at that request since she left the rehab center the day before. She was no happier now. She was standing in the visitor area of the rehab center at an ungodly hour of the morning. Everything started late in Hollywood, and she’d gotten in the habit of arriving places at a reasonable hour—like ten.

  But she had needed time to drive out to Malibu and drive back, and still manage to have her normal day. Which meant starting hours earlier than usual.

  Not even coffee had helped.

  And then the fact that she was lugging paper didn’t improve her mood much either.

  Paper was a foreign concept to Jodi. She had bunches of it, mostly tied up in contracts with the studios’ legal departments. Legal always wanted paper—reams and reams of it—because they believed that paper showed things better, things like signatures. Mortal lawyers believed that signatures needed to be solid things, things you could run your fingers across.

  Never mind that the magical had known for years that paper was susceptible to corruption. Signatures could be copied with the right magic (she had it—it was part of the domestic skills that she needed to get things right in a household), and the words on the page could be changed with a touch.

  So she had turned over the entire process to Ramon the day before, after she got back from the center. She had told him to give her everything he c
ould find on the subject in hard copy—and she meant everything. He had given her one of his patented are-you-kidding-me looks but had jumped right in.

  Which was a good thing, because she had had that day’s messes to clean up, some of which happened because of her trip to Malibu.

  A trip she was repeating this morning.

  She stood in the entry, tapping her heavy purse against her leg, feeling irritated. She had planned to drop this stuff off and leave. She certainly wasn’t going to spend much time talking to Bluebeard.

  He had unnerved her the day before—and not in the way she had expected. All night long she thought about how handsome he was and how different he was from the smelly drunk she had met.

  At first she blamed her reaction on his charm, but then—deep into the night—she began to wonder: Was she that lonely? It had been years since she’d had a serious relationship. (Make that decades.) She’d dated a bit a year or two ago, but none of the men she’d met had interested her.

  She hadn’t really sworn off men, but she hadn’t pursued any either. Having relationships in the Greater World was just too hard.

  So maybe, she figured, her reaction to Bluebeard was simply a hormone thing: she’d been too long without a man, and he cleaned up well.

  Still, the fact that she was obsessing about him worried her, so she planned to keep everything short, to the point, and professional this morning.

  That was, if she saw him at all. If Hargrove showed up first, Jodi was going to shove the papers at him. And then she was going to leave.

  Jodi hadn’t been in the main entrance for five minutes when the guard stuck his head in the door and told her someone would be right with her. She thanked him. Then she set her purse near one of the empty Eames chairs and walked around the room.

  All 1960s California modern with the angles and light, which made it look different in the early morning than it did in the late afternoon, almost like she was in a completely different place.

  The moments alone gave her a chance to look for the wards that Tank had told her about. It took some searching, but Jodi found six wards along the top of the door she had entered through. There were five matching wards on the door that led to the back, the door marked “Private.” She wondered how many other wards she would find.

  The six were somewhat crude, and it took her a minute to figure out why. They hadn’t been assembled on the spot, the way that wards should have been. Instead, they had been made elsewhere and then put up near the door. Which meant that the wards had two features: one to keep fairies away, and one to help the wards stay in place.

  The two features diminished the power of the wards and gave them limited effectiveness. In fact, they were starting to curl around the edges as if they were drying up.

  She didn’t dare move them for three reasons: she hadn’t made them, she hadn’t purchased them, and she didn’t live here. If she lived here, then she would be able to put them up or take them down at will.

  She would tell Blue about them and have him remove the wards. Then she would tell him how to safely neutralize them.

  She wondered if he would do it or if he had been the one to purchase the wards.

  A commotion in the hallway made her step back. She picked up her purse and turned toward the noise. Two men came down a long corridor. She recognized the tall one instantly. It was Bluebeard, moving like an athlete, quickly, gracefully, and with ease—so unlike the Bluebeard that she used to know. At his side was Jamison Hargrove, and unless Jodi missed her guess, Hargrove had his hand on the flat of Bluebeard’s back, propelling him forward.

  So Bluebeard hadn’t wanted to come. Interesting. She wondered why. He had been awfully nervous the day before.

  Maybe he was involved in these stalkings, although she didn’t see how. His magic showed that he couldn’t transport himself out of this facility, and she didn’t see the point of working with a partner, not on something like this. There were other ways to terrorize women without appearing in their bedrooms at night.

  The two men stopped in front of her. Sweat beaded on Hargrove’s forehead, but Bluebeard didn’t look as if he had exercised at all. He was looking down, his gaze not meeting hers, again.

  That was unnerving all by itself.

  “Ms. Walters,” Hargrove said.

  “Dr. Hargrove,” Jodi said, feeling awkward. She didn’t know what to call Bluebeard. “Blue.”

  He didn’t answer her.

  “Why don’t you take Mr. Franklin to the same room you met in yesterday,” Hargrove said. “I’m sure you have a lot to discuss.”

  Franklin, huh? Awfully close to Frankenstein. But of course, she didn’t say that. She wondered why Hargrove was being so formal this morning, when the day before he had called Bluebeard “Blue.” Perhaps because Hargrove was irritated with Bluebeard? To make a point?

  She didn’t know, and she didn’t want to know. Instead she smiled at Hargrove—since he was the only person looking at her.

  “Lead the way, Doctor.”

  He did. He steered Bluebeard as if the man were on a string, sending him toward that room like he had no choice. Maybe he didn’t. Hargrove opened the door, and as he did so, he seemed to push Bluebeard inside.

  Jodi followed a little slowly.

  “I’m afraid we’ll still be observing,” Hargrove said, “but with the sound off as we agreed.”

  She wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or to Bluebeard or to both of them.

  “I won’t be staying long,” she said. “I just have a few things to drop off.”

  “I understand,” Hargrove said, although there was no way that he could. He gave her a smile, then peered into the room. He nodded once, the way a parent nodded to direct a recalcitrant child, and then hurried down the hall.

  Jodi took a deep breath and stepped inside the room. She pulled the door closed but didn’t let it latch. As she stepped away from it, the door latched anyway. Apparently it was one of those heavier doors on some kind of spring, designed to close once it was in a particular position—probably for confidentiality.

  Bluebeard had gone deep into the room near the pillows. He stood with his back to her, hands clasped behind him.

  “I brought you the files you requested,” Jodi said.

  “Thank you,” he said without turning around. All that did was make her realize that he had a beautiful voice with just a bit of an accent. It almost sounded British, but it wasn’t. It came from one of the Kingdoms, from the old language. He had probably been raised speaking that.

  “I’m not going to explain them to you,” Jodi said. “Just look them over, then have Hargrove contact me when you’ve finished. I’m sure you’ll have something to say about them.”

  “I’m not,” Bluebeard said softly.

  “Still,” Jodi said, “I want to hear your ideas. Or rather, Tank does.”

  He nodded, then shoved his hands in his pockets. He no longer stood straight. He was hunched slightly, as if the very idea of going over the papers unnerved him.

  “Speaking of Tank,” Jodi said, “I had a chance to look at some of the wards in this building. They’re weakening. They weren’t made by someone living in this facility. They were brought in from the outside.”

  He turned slightly. His head was tilted downward but at an angle so he could see her now. He sounded surprised. She had finally caught his attention.

  “You can tell this how?” he asked.

  “Domestic magic specializes in warding,” she said. “Each ward is made differently, and each ward has a different purpose. These wards aren’t native to the building, meaning they have no connection to someone who lives here, and they have two different purposes—to keep fairies out and to stay on the walls. Which means that someone from the outside made them, and someone connected to this place bought them.”

  He ran a hand over his mouth. She could almost hear that defensiveness he had had the day before: I didn’t put up any wards. I can’t do that kind of thing.

  He didn
’t say anything. She couldn’t tell if he was at a loss for words or if he was being purposefully silent, so she said, “I can tell you how to take them down.”

  He threaded his hands together. This time he turned all the way, but again, he kept his head down. “Why do I have to take them down?”

  He didn’t sound surly; he sounded worried. He understood magic, then, and all of its good and bad attributes.

  “Because I can’t,” she said. “I didn’t make them or buy them. And I don’t live here.”

  He nodded, then licked his lower lip. He ran a hand over his face again and looked at the wall just past her. It made her feel better that he had raised his head slightly. She could see his eyes now, even though he still wasn’t looking at her directly.

  She hadn’t imagined it yesterday; he was the most gorgeous man she had ever seen. She had no idea how that was possible, given how many amazing men she’d met, drop-dead beautiful men who got paid to share their beauty on film.

  But there was something else to him—a sparkle, a shine, a gloss—something that made him seem even more handsome, even with the weird behavior.

  She would have to do some reading on charm magic. She had avoided it until now. The charming ones usually didn’t need her services to get work in this town. Either they had enough money, or someone approached them à la Lana Turner in a drugstore.

  “So someone who lives here put them up?” he asked.

  “Not necessarily,” she said. “It has to be someone with a legitimate connection to this place. An employee could do it. An absentee owner, an heir of that absentee owner, a relative of yours—”

  He actually shuddered as she said that and shook his head. The movements were small but noticeable.

  “—even someone who supplies the place with food on a regular basis,” she said. “Anyone could do it with the right connection.”

  “So why can’t you?” he asked. “You’re here.”

  “I’m here as a favor to someone else,” she said. “I have no real connection here. Besides, these went up before I got here.”