Charming Blue

by Kristine Grayson

  “Did they go up before I got here?” he asked, clearly looking for an out.

  “No,” she said.

  His eyes flicked toward hers for just a moment, and then his eyes moved away quickly, like a child who had been told not to look at something but couldn’t restrain himself.

  She had had enough weirdness. “Why don’t you look at me?”

  “Personal quirk,” he said too quickly.

  “No, it’s not,” she said. “You looked at Dr. Hargrove when he spoke to you. You don’t want to look at me. I want to know why.”

  He shook his head. “Really, it’s nothing.”

  “If it was nothing, then you should look at me,” she said.

  He swallowed and closed his eyes. Then he turned his back on her. “You know who I am, right?”

  “Of course I do,” she said. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “No, you’re here because Tank asked you. If she had asked you to see some homicide cop to see if there were murders that were similar to the stalkings, you would have done that, right?”

  Her heart raced. “There are murders similar to the stalkings?”

  “No, no. I didn’t say that.” Then he bowed his head and paused for a long moment. “I don’t know anything about these events or anything else that’s been happening in the Greater World since I got here.”

  “But you know what’s going on in the Kingdoms?”

  He let out a small sigh. “Hell, I haven’t been there in a century or more. No, I don’t know anything.”

  He seemed defeated somehow, as if this very conversation hurt him. She didn’t have a lot of experience with criminals. She didn’t know if they could all affect this vulnerable stance or if only the ones with magical charm could pull it off.

  “All right then,” she said. “For a brief moment, you managed to deflect my question, but now I want to return to it. Why won’t you look at me?”

  He shook his head. “Please. There’s nothing I can say.”

  She crossed her arms. He had been making her uncomfortable. Now she was making him uncomfortable, and she rather enjoyed it. She hated behavior she didn’t entirely understand.

  “Say it anyway,” she said. “I know who you are. I know what you’ve done. You can’t say anything to make me think less of you.”

  He bent his head even more, as if her words were a blow. “I’m not trying to curry favor—”

  “Good,” she said. “You’re not going to get it.”

  He nodded. “So long as we’re clear.”

  Then he took a deep, visible breath and turned around. This time his gaze met hers, for just a second. Eyes wide, clear, a small frown line creasing his forehead. After a moment he blinked and looked down.

  “I know what I’ve done,” he said softly. “I know I don’t deserve your respect or even your attention. It’s just that, for the most part, I don’t remember doing any of those things in my past. I did them, there’s no doubt about that, but except for a few random images, I can’t remember anything.”

  She waited, her stomach twisting. She had asked him to explain, and so he was. But she didn’t have to like what he was saying.

  “The women who died were… well, one was my wife.” His voice was very soft. “The others were my fiancées, and then toward the end just women I had conversations with. It got twisted in the retelling that they were all wives. Maybe it would have been easier if they had been.”

  “Easier?” Jodi asked in spite of herself.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I would have known how to stop my behavior. I wouldn’t have married anyone.”

  Her breath caught. He sounded so smart, so calm, so rational. No wonder Tank believed him. The charm combined with the way he took responsibility was attractive.

  This was how cult leaders did it—they made the unreasonable sound reasonable.

  Her silence seemed to bother him. He shrugged, still not looking at her. “No one has died at my hand in several centuries. No one has died in the Greater World.”

  What, do you want a medal? she almost asked but didn’t. She resorted to sarcasm when she was uncomfortable. And right now, she was so uncomfortable she was ready to back out of this room.

  “Since the last death, I haven’t looked at a woman. I haven’t talked to a woman, except in passing, and I never ever touch one. I try to avoid people as much as possible. I’m afraid if I get to know a woman’s face, the image will get in my brain, and then…”

  He closed his eyes. She waited.

  “Then it’ll start all over again,” he whispered.

  He opened his eyes and looked at her. She had an odd sense that she was seeing down to the very core of him.

  “I don’t want it to start again, can’t you see that? I’m doing everything I can to prevent it. You’re the first woman I’ve talked to in at least a century—”

  “That’s not true,” Jodi said. “I’ve seen you talk to women at parties.”

  He shook his head. “They talk to me. Mostly they tell me how much they despise me or how badly they want me to leave. Sometimes they yell at me. I might talk back, I don’t know, but when I’m drunk, nothing stays in my head.”

  Her eyes narrowed. This sounded plausible. She hadn’t seen him have actual conversations. She’d seen people talking to him, and then the situation devolving into fights or upset. But an actual conversation, no.

  “Is that why you come to parties? To talk to women?”

  He shook his head. “I never plan to come. Then I get drunk, and I think I can lurk in a corner, maybe cage a free drink. I never really look at anyone, and then I get tossed out.” He shrugged. “Weirdly, I’m an optimistic drunk.”

  Jodi didn’t want to think about that.

  “What about Tank?” she said. “She’s female.”

  “Tank.” He smiled and the smile was clearly a fond one. He seemed to like her as much as she liked him. “Tank isn’t like us. She’s something else. There’s never going to be an attraction because she’s a different species. We had this discussion, she and I, a long, long time ago. And she proved over decades that I don’t have to worry about hurting her.”

  “She likes you,” Jodi said, as if that was a character flaw.

  He nodded. “I like her too. And so far, that hasn’t come back to haunt either of us.”

  Jodi sighed. “So you can’t talk to women because if you do, you might kill them.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “To put it bluntly.”

  “And you have no control over that?” Jodi said. At least, she had meant that as a question. Instead, it was more of a statement. A statement filled with sarcasm.

  “I have control,” he said. “I stay drunk. I stay away from people. I don’t interact. But see, here’s the problem. I am talking to you, and I remember you, and I’m sober, and frankly, that scares the hell out of me.”

  She just realized that her heart rate had increased as well. Apparently it scared the hell out of her too.

  “What can you do to me?” she asked. “We’re being watched on security cameras, and your magic won’t let you fly out of here on a wing and a prayer. If I drive away, you can’t follow me. If I go home and lock my doors, you can’t get in. If I put up wards against you, you can’t break them. So tell me, Bluebeard, why the hell should I be scared of you?”

  He looked at her. The color had left his face. His mouth was open slightly. Clearly no one had talked to him this way in a very long time.

  “Fifteen women,” he said quietly. “Fifteen women that I liked, or worse, that I loved. What happened to them…” He shook his head, almost as if he couldn’t contemplate it. Then he took another of those visible deep breaths. “What happened to them shouldn’t have happened to anyone. It was brutal, more brutal than the fairy tales described, and the one thing the fairy tales got right, the one thing, was those heads…”

  He bowed his head and put his hand over his mouth as if trying to prevent himself from talking more. Either what happened really did disturb
him, or he was the best actor she had ever seen.

  But she knew that murderers often felt remorse for their crimes.

  “You haven’t told anyone here who you are, have you?” she said softly.

  He swallowed hard, let his hand drop, and said, “No. What am I supposed to say? Hey, I’m a fairy tale creature? The worst bogeyman from the very worst fairy tale?”

  “No,” she said, “but you could tell them about all the women you killed.”

  “To what end?” he said. “Tank brings me here. They guard me. They keep me segregated at my request—at least, until yesterday—and then I get clean. This is—was—the only place where I was reasonably certain people—women—could be safe from me. I’d finish my little stint here, and they’d release me, and I’d be drunk two hours later. It worked. Probably better than putting me in prison for life where they couldn’t figure out why I don’t age like everyone else. Besides, Tank would probably bust me out of there. She seems to believe I’m redeemable.”

  “What does that mean?” Jodi asked.

  He shrugged one shoulder. “You’d have to ask her.”

  Jodi frowned. She never would have expected Tank to be susceptible to charm magic. Or at least, not for very long.

  So Tank brought him here hoping he’d stay clean, but he never would. Yet he stayed for the entire program each time. There had to be only one reason.

  “This is your safe haven, then,” Jodi said. “And I just ruined it for you. You can’t come here anymore.”

  “I can stay here if you don’t come back,” he said. “If you stay away, we’ll be fine.”

  She nodded once. He didn’t have to ask her twice. She reached into her purse, removed the thick file of printouts that Ramon had made, and tossed them on the coffee table.

  “Tell you what,” she said. “You read this stuff. I’ll tell you how to take the wards down, and then you and Tank can discuss how similar this guy is to you. I don’t have to come back, and you don’t ever have to see me again. Does that sound good?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Will what you tell me work on all wards?”

  “Why?” she asked. “You want to break into my house?”

  “No.” He sounded sad. “But I don’t want to know how to break all wards. I don’t want to have that power, you understand?”

  Oddly enough, she did.

  But she didn’t want to sound in any way sympathetic to him. She didn’t want to give this guy the wrong idea about anything.

  “Here’s how wards work, Romeo,” she said.

  “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t call me that, not even in jest. Please.”

  She frowned at him and continued.

  “You can’t touch a ward that’s made to protect someone from you. If you do, depending on the power of the ward, you could get hurt or maybe even killed. You can’t even spectrally cross a threshold that has a ward against you.”

  “Ever?” he asked, looking confused.

  “Ever,” she said.

  “Has that changed over the years?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “That’s the nature of wards. They’ve always been like that.”

  “That’s not possible,” he said. “The village, at the end, the entire village had wards against me. Still, one of the girls who died, she was in a house with wards against me.”

  Jodi looked at him. His gaze was meeting hers and she had the sense that he didn’t even know he was doing that. She could see deep into those beautiful blue eyes, and she saw no deception in them.

  Maybe she was really, really susceptible to his magic.

  “That’s why my parents sent me away,” he said, “because even the most powerful wards designed to keep me away didn’t work against my twisted magic. No one was safe. So I left. I did. I stayed as far from people as I could. That’s why the Greater World was so appealing. America. Back then, it didn’t have a lot of people, and I could be by myself for a long time.”

  The idea of wards that hadn’t worked disturbed him. But it didn’t disturb her as much as the beauty of his eyes did.

  “Clearly,” she said, “whoever made the wards did it wrong. That happens. It’s not a common skill. Not all domestics have it.”

  “But you do,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And you know you’re good,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  He nodded, and finally his gaze left hers. She felt his gaze move away, as if he had been touching her and stopped.

  “Look,” he said, “it’s too risky. I don’t want to know how to disable those wards. Either you do it, or we wait until they decay.”

  “Tank wants to settle this Fairy Tale Stalker thing,” Jodi said, not sure exactly what she was trying to convince him of.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I understand that. Tell her that—well, hell, don’t tell her anything. I’ll look at this stuff tonight, and if I have nothing, I’ll have Hargrove call you. Otherwise, I’ll get permission to call you and give you the update, okay? He already got to see me interact with you twice.”

  “He wanted to see you interact with me?” she asked.

  Bluebeard smiled. It was a rueful look. “Yeah. He seems to believe that something about my relationship with women causes me to drink.”

  “And he thinks he can solve that?” she asked.

  Bluebeard’s smile became real for just a brief second. His eyes actually twinkled.

  “Well,” he said, “sometimes we all have delusions of grandeur.”

  Chapter 9

  No matter what happened, that man left her terribly unnerved. Jodi left the rehab center with her head spinning. She believed that he didn’t remember much about the murders, just enough to convince him that he did it. She also believed that he was doing whatever he could to prevent another, at least consciously.

  The idea that his subconscious wanted to kill women who interested him… well, that was more upsetting than she wanted to acknowledge. Because she didn’t get a sense of evil from this man, and she usually got a sense of evil from evil people/creatures.

  She wondered if the attraction and the charm overwhelmed her own sense of danger. She didn’t know if that awareness-of-evil sense came from her domestic magic or if it was just a part of her. If it came from her magic—and she had never seen anything to convince her that it did or did not—then something he had done had overwhelmed it.

  And it would imply that he had done something to overwhelm those wards all those years ago.

  She drove back to her office with the top down and songs blaring, although once she got to work, she had no sense of what she listened to. A group of gnomes huddled in her front yard like a defeated army. After she got out of the car, she discovered that they didn’t want to be classified as “little people” on a movie set, and they were tossed off for being unnecessarily political.

  It took three phone calls to settle that mess, and another to deal with shape-shifter revolt on the set of the latest Twilight knockoff. Mostly her job was either about finesse (the gnome crisis) or about plausible lies (the shape-shifter issue). And her lies weren’t even that plausible. No one really listened in Hollywood, so long as the problem got taken care of.

  She half expected to see Tank, but Tank didn’t show. Jodi left a message at the Archetype Place because that was the only way she knew how to reach Tank. But no one there had seen Tank for a week, which wasn’t that unusual. Tank did what Tank did, and usually without letting anyone know about it.

  Jodi got her dinner at In-n-Out Burger—simple cheeseburger, fries, and a vanilla shake. She’d planned to eat better for years, really, and she did exercise (didn’t everyone in LA?), but on days like this, days when she couldn’t quite deal with all the various stresses, she ate badly. On purpose.

  Still, she didn’t eat the burger in her car or at one of those never-quite-clean tables. She got takeout and brought it home.

  Home was a 1924 Spanish-style bungalow in Hancock Park. Jodi had bought the house new
, although it had taken work. Back then, people who looked like her couldn’t buy homes in Hancock Park which was, at the time, the most upscale part of the budding city of Los Angeles. Jodi had a friend from the Kingdoms who did an appearance spell, so Jodi’s looks matched the neighborhood’s desires—only for her dealings with the bank. Once she purchased the house, she went back to her usual look. At the time, the neighbors thought she was the help and didn’t pay attention to her. But others did. Nat King Cole bought a house in the area in 1948, partly because he thought the neighborhood was friendly, since he’d been to parties at Jodi’s house. Instead, he was the one credited (correctly) with breaking the color barrier—since he was the first one to challenge it.

  Jodi just went around it, like she did so many other goofy and inexplicable things in the Greater World.

  She was feeling the weight of those things as she let herself into the house, balancing her purse, her phone, the bag of greasy food, and her briefcase. She put the phone in its recharging cradle on the occasional table beside the door—she was damned if she was going to talk to anyone tonight—then she kicked off her shoes, walked stocking-footed across the polished hardwood floor, and dropped her purse and briefcase along the way.

  She was tired, grumpy, and hungry. Normally, she would have set herself a plate at the breakfast nook in the kitchen, but she didn’t. She went straight to the family room off the pool, dropped the burger bag on the ratty coffee table she kept for just that purpose, turned on the big-screen TV on the wall, and set it to show her sixteen channels at the same time. She didn’t care which sixteen channels she watched; she just wanted faces and noise and something to think about besides hiring the magical and just how disturbing her conversation with Bluebeard had been.

  Of course, the TV found three local news channels and all of them were running stories on the Fairy Tale Stalker. No new photos, no new sketches, nothing except that there’d been another sighting or visitation or whatever the hell you wanted to call it, this time in Echo Park, an area of the city he hadn’t worked before.