“With this guy,” he said softly, his hand moving across the papers.
“No, Blue,” she said, deciding to use his nickname. “With you.”
Chapter 17
Blue propelled himself out of the couch and backed away from Jodi as quickly as he could. He scrambled around the couch, putting it between them.
“I didn’t do anything, did I? I was awake all night. I was here. I couldn’t have done anything, could I?”
He sounded like an ass. He was an ass, but that was the least of his worries. He had hurt someone, damaged someone, maybe had been hurting or damaging all along.
Or killing them. God, what if he had been killing people without realizing it?
Again.
What if he had been doing it again?
But Jodi hadn’t run away. She hadn’t fled to the door; she hadn’t done anything.
Except sit down.
She set her purse on the floor beside her chair and folded her hands in her lap.
Like a counselor would, waiting for the patient to calm down enough to talk to.
But she wasn’t a counselor. She was a chatelaine or the daughter of chatelaines, and she’d transferred that to Hollywood somehow. She had called herself a fixer. She fixed things. That was why Tank had gone to her.
At least, that was what she had said.
“How come you’re not scared?” he asked. “Yesterday you were scared of me. You were disgusted by me. Today you’re not.”
She sat straight, hands clasped together. She was wearing black, and it accented her auburn hair. She looked perfect. She looked calm.
She looked beautiful.
He couldn’t notice how beautiful she was. He didn’t dare.
“I’m not scared or disgusted,” she said, “because I know what’s going on now.”
His heart was racing. He gripped the back of the couch so hard that his fingers were digging into the fabric. “You’re what, psychic now? How can you know?”
“You’re not going to like what I tell you,” she said. “Why don’t you sit down?”
He was too panicked to sit down. Too frightened. Not of her. But of himself.
“Just tell me,” he said.
So she did.
And it was hard for him to listen to her. He had gone to her house, to her bedroom, he had woken her up like he had done every other woman he ever hurt, and he hadn’t spoken. His fiancée—his first one—she had thought it seductive, seeing him, thought he was teasing her, and she had joked about it the following day. And it had gone on for a few more days before… before…
“Are you listening?” Jodi asked.
He nodded. “That last part,” he said. “I was in the room, right?”
“That’s what I thought,” she said, “and truthfully, I ran. I was afraid of you, Blue.”
He nodded. He could barely breathe. Dammit, it was happening again. To this woman. He liked her. He didn’t want to hurt her.
He didn’t want to hurt anyone.
“You should be afraid of me,” he said sadly. “Everyone should.”
He was.
Then the door opened. Dr. Hargrove peeked in. His curly hair was mussed, and he had a fresh coffee stain on his shirt. He’d clearly hurried here from somewhere else.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
Blue had forgotten: the staff had been watching everything on a security feed. They saw his panic, saw Jodi act calm, saw how distressed he was.
Blue didn’t even have a plausible lie.
“I had some news for him that surprised him,” Jodi said calmly. “Nothing more.”
“It looks like more,” Dr. Hargrove said from the door.
“I know, and I’m sorry,” Jodi said. “I—”
“It’s my fault,” Blue said. “I’m sorry. It’s my fault. I overreacted. I’m still not used to this kind of conversation. I’m—you know—fragile.”
Normally he hated that word, but today it fit. He was fragile, and terrified. But he couldn’t let Dr. Hargrove see that or Dr. Hargrove would find himself deep in a magical universe he didn’t understand.
Or he would turn it into some mundane serial killer thing that would fit perfectly into some Greater World box but wouldn’t work with the magic and the Kingdoms and… a curse?
Did she really mean a curse?
“All right then,” Dr. Hargrove said. “But let’s stay calm, shall we?”
You try to stay calm in this circumstance, Blue wanted to say. You just try it. You’d be a gibbering idiot in a week. You couldn’t have stood up to half of what I lived through.
But he didn’t say it. He was rather astonished that he had thought it. He tried not to think of himself or his circumstance at all, and suddenly it was at the forefront of his mind.
“Blue?” Dr. Hargrove said. “All right?”
All right what? Was he all right? He was so upset that he couldn’t follow the conversation. He was trying to think about all of this, and he couldn’t.
“Are you all right?” Dr. Hargrove asked. “Can you stay calm?”
Oh, that was what he meant.
“Everything’s fine, Doc,” Blue said. “Really. I just got startled, that’s all.”
Jodi smiled at Dr. Hargrove. “I appreciate the fact that you checked in. Thank you.”
Her tone was both grateful and dismissive, a real trick. One that Blue used to know. He used to be able to do that and make the person feel like they’d just received the biggest compliment of their entire life.
Doctor Hargrove frowned at both of them, then pulled the door closed.
Jodi stared at it for a moment, as if she was making sure he was gone, then she sighed and looked at Blue. “Are you really okay?”
“No,” he said, and he couldn’t keep that panic from his voice. “I was in your room.”
“You weren’t,” Jodi said. “You didn’t let me finish. I called here to check, and they tracked you down. You were reading this stuff.”
“They saw me?”
“In person and on video,” she said. “The person who answered the phones even checked the security log.”
“I was here,” he said in wonderment. And yet he had been in her bedroom. “So I—what? Sent some kind of projection of myself?”
“You didn’t lose any time, did you?” Jodi asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“You didn’t,” she said confidently. “I’m sure you didn’t, and even if you did, it wouldn’t matter.”
“It would,” he said. “God, I don’t want to hurt you, and now you’re in real danger—”
“I am in danger,” she said calmly—how could she be calm about that? “But not from you.”
“What?” he said. “How could that be?”
“Let me finish,” she said.
“Okay,” he said and braced himself for the worst.
Chapter 18
Jodi told him about Tank finding her, about the fairy dust, about the images, about what was wrong with the images. She told him everything in great detail, including their conclusion—hers and Tank’s—that this wasn’t his magic at all.
All the while he watched her warily, flinching sometimes, as if he didn’t quite believe her or as if memory was taking him elsewhere. He had grown very pale. His hands gripped the back of the couch so tightly that she thought his fingers were going to poke holes in it.
“So when I came in here,” she said, “I checked your aura. It looks different today. It has all kinds of disorganized magic surrounding it.”
He swallowed visibly. “And that means what?”
“I think it means Tank is right. I activated the curse.”
He shook his head. “I activated it. I noticed you. I thought about you. And now you’re in danger, aren’t you?”
She took a deep breath. That was the crux of the problem. Whether caused by Blue or by someone else, the fact didn’t change that fifteen women had died.
“Yes,” she said.
“Yes,” she said.
“And she’s not in here, so there’s still something preventing her from getting in,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. She was beginning to sound like a broken record.
He leaned over the couch. She wondered for a moment if he was going to be ill.
She had never seen anyone so shaken before. Of course, she had never changed someone’s perspective this much before, altered his worldview, made him look at everything—including himself—differently.
It took all of her strength to sit calmly. She wanted to go over to him and put her arms around him.
She wanted to comfort him, and that surprised her. Usually she tried to keep her distance, but this man was in such distress…
And he had charm magic. She had to remember that.
“Teach me how to take down the wards,” he said. “I need to talk to Tank.”
“Why don’t we just go outside?” Jodi asked.
He shook his head. “We’ll have our own security guard following us, and I don’t want him to hear this.”
“All right.” She stood up and brushed her skirt over her knees. She was shaking just a bit herself. “It’s not that hard, really. It’s like taking down a spiderweb, only you have to crumble the pieces and say the right words over it.”
“You’ll teach me the words, right?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Before I do, can you look at them and figure out who put them up?”
“No,” she said. “The person who put them up is not the person who made them, so the wards can’t tell me much.”
He glanced at the security cameras on the ceiling. “The staff is going to be wondering what I’m doing.”
She shrugged. “Tell them you don’t like spiderwebs.”
He smiled at her absently. She was amazed he could smile right now.
“You know,” he said, “I don’t.”
Chapter 19
The words that Jodi taught him made no sense to him, but that was the way of magic spells. They used an old language, older than some of the Kingdom languages. Besides, she must have come from a Kingdom different from his (or she really would have been terrified of him), and the language must have been vastly different.
She helped him pull over a chair. Then he climbed on it, crumbled the first ward, and said the words. Apparently he had said them right, because she smiled at him and ducked outside.
He watched her walk to the only car in the visitor lot, a red Mercedes convertible that somehow suited her. Beautiful, powerful, flashy, but not too flashy.
He swallowed hard, then concentrated, taking the next ward in his hands. The things felt like spiderwebs too, old spiderwebs, crumbly, sticky, and forgotten.
He said the words, and the ward poofed out of existence. Like the first one had done.
Magic. He didn’t really understand it. His magic was a part of him, like his nose. Charm wasn’t something he consciously did—not until his father taught him how to enhance the charm. His father had been a Charming too. Blue looked like his father—or he had as a young man. His father had loved his charm magic and loved to use it.
He had probably overused it when the killings started.
The murders.
And Blue hadn’t done them.
He was a little dizzy, a lot stressed, and very, very confused. Those memories, they had been partial, but they had been real. And yet, these wards were real. He felt them beneath his fingertips, but once he disarmed them, they vanished.
A curse. Could it be that simple?
Why hadn’t his parents seen it?
Why hadn’t anyone?
He so wanted to believe this, but he didn’t want to at the same time. If Jodi and Tank were wrong, then he was going to do a lot more damage.
He took the next ward, crumbled it, and said the words over it. It vanished with a little puff of magic.
Jodi had her back to him. She had a beautiful figure, and she dressed well. She was one of the most stunning women he had ever seen.
And he couldn’t think that. He thought it because she was one of the few women he had seen—actually seen—in years. Decades. Centuries.
That was all.
If he could disconnect the attraction somehow, maybe he could negate the curse.
If it was a curse.
He worked on the next ward.
He would talk to Tank. Tank would give him answers. He would believe Tank.
Kinda.
He closed his eyes for just a moment. He was terrified. He hadn’t been this afraid since the first accusation all those years ago. Since the images came. The “memories.”
What if Jodi was wrong?
What if she was right?
What then?
Chapter 20
Blue looked shell-shocked and frightened. Or stunned and alarmed. Jodi wasn’t quite sure what the right words were. But she knew she had to give him time, and taking down the wards was easy.
He needed a minute alone. So she went outside to tell Tank that she could join them in the conference room, provided she did not alight anywhere for long. She usually wasn’t visible on film because she moved too fast, but if someone wanted to see what she was, they could slow the images down.
Usually Tank just threw fairy dust at a camera, but Jodi didn’t want her to do that either. Given how fast Hargrove had entered the room when he saw Blue upset, she figured Hargrove would teleport there if the camera cut out.
Tank was dive-bombing some seagulls, screaming at them and pulling their feathers out. She had dropped a small collection of feathers around the guard station.
The guard himself, glittering a bit with fairy dust, was watching the birds with a frown on his face.
“I’ve never seen them do that,” he said to Jodi.
“Me either,” she said. “You’d think someone was torturing them or something.”
“I am not torturing them,” Tank said as she dropped another feather beside the guard. He didn’t seem to hear her. She had magicked him well, then. “You were in there a long time.”
Jodi nodded. She spoke to the guard. “I’m still not done with my meeting. Can you make sure those birds don’t poop on my car for the next half hour or so?”
“I’ll do what I can,” he said, “but they’re acting crazy.”
“Everything’s topsy-turvy today,” Jodi said. “I wish I knew some magic that would make the gulls settle down.”
“Yeah, me too,” the guard said. “It sure is bothering me.”
“He’s got too much time on his hands,” Tank said, grinning. She was enjoying this.
Jodi narrowed her eyes. Tank had been particularly difficult this morning. It was probably stress, but it made things hard for Jodi.
“You,” Jodi said in the softest voice she had. “With me. Now.”
She hoped Tank understood that message was for her. Tank rolled her eyes and flew right next to the door. Then she stopped and peered above the mantel. She was clearly looking for the wards.
She clapped her tiny hands together and spun in a circle for a moment. She looked like a little tornado.
She stopped and ended up facing Jodi. “They’re gone.”
“Yes,” Jodi said softly. She knew that because Blue had moved the chair back to its original spot. He wouldn’t have done that if the wards were still up.
He was nowhere to be seen. Either he was in the meeting room or he was cleaning up. She had told him to wash his hands thoroughly and to change clothes, just in case part of the wards had fallen on him.
Then she frowned. She had trusted him to remove the wards correctly. She usually trusted no one to act properly with magic.
Charm or practicality? Or exhaustion?
She wasn’t sure what it was.
She pulled the door open and said quietly to Tank, “You can come in now.”
“Oh, goodie.” Tank
bobbed up and down on the air currents that came from inside. She actually seemed pleased to go into the rehab center.
Jodi still hated the place.
“Keep moving. There are cameras,” Jodi said as she headed toward the meeting room door.
Blue’s paperwork was inside, but he wasn’t.
She sat down in her chair. Tank flew around her. Jodi kept her head down so that no one could see her lips move on the security footage.
“Are you sure you’re safe in here?” she asked Tank. “We still don’t know who put up those wards.”
“Oh, I figured that out yesterday,” Tank said.
“It would’ve been nice of you to share,” Jodi said.
Tank flew past her, headed up toward the camera, and Jodi said, “Don’t do it. They’ll come in here if the cameras cut out.”
“Great,” Tank said and flew down toward the papers. “I’d really like to stop moving.”
“Your only choice is to hide in my purse,” Jodi said.
“That is not a choice,” Tank said. She flew over to the pillows, then dove in and out of them, as if she was inspecting them for hiding places. Then she flew back to the couch, moving low across its surface.
“So who set up the wards?” Jodi asked.
“Oh, guess,” Tank said.
“I don’t know,” Jodi said.
“They’re store-bought. They were made general because store-bought wards can’t be specific. But most people don’t hate small fairies. Well, all except one. People only know about one. And she’s a featured icon of Disneyland, the little—”
“Are you saying that this was for Tink? Who would do that?” Jodi asked.
Tank flew to the other chairs, inspecting them. She was clearly looking for a place to land. But she was visible against all of the chairs. If she landed, the staff would be able to see her.
“Peter’s in here. Again,” Tank said.
“You’re saying Peter put up the wards? I thought Peter and Tinker Bell got along.”
“Nooooo,” Tank said. “The relationship ended years ago, but she won’t admit it. He became a Lost Boy out of necessity, not because it’s a cool name.”
“I don’t want to hear this,” Jodi said. “I rather like that story.”
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