Charming Blue

by Kristine Grayson

  Only it hadn’t been a connection. He couldn’t presume to have a connection. Once they figured out what was going on, he would probably never see Jodi again. The thought made him sad but relieved at the same time.

  He didn’t want to hurt her, but all he had ever done with women was hurt them. Whether he meant to or not, whether it was a curse or not.

  He was the kind of man that women shouldn’t trust. Because he didn’t even really trust himself.

  Chapter 27

  The waiter set down two glasses of iced tea, a pitcher, and an extra empty glass for the person who (supposedly) hadn’t yet arrived. He also gave them some bread and a complimentary hors d’oeuvres just because Jodi was a valued customer.

  She was glad for the interruption. She hadn’t been able to catch her breath since her fingers brushed against Blue’s. His touch had sent shivers through her.

  The man radiated charm even when he wasn’t trying.

  She didn’t want to be attracted to him. Intellectually, she knew what a disaster that would be. But her body wasn’t listening. She wanted to brush against him more often (she wasn’t even sure that touch was a complete accident), and she wanted to sit much closer to him, maybe lean against him.

  It took most of her self-control to prevent herself from putting a comforting (yeah, right) hand over his or patting him slightly on the shoulder (to see if those muscles were real).

  She felt her cheeks heat. She didn’t want to think about this, so she smiled at the waiter as he set down the empty glass right near Tank and nearly put an appetizer plate on top of her.

  Tank didn’t move. She was used to this. Instead she huddled against her napkin as if she was part of it.

  Apparently the waiter thought she was.

  Blue had moved the paperwork slightly to the side so that the waiter wouldn’t set anything on it. Blue kept his head down, as if he didn’t want to be recognized. So far as Jodi knew, no one had recognized him, so she wasn’t entirely sure what the problem was.

  The waiter left, and instantly Tank grabbed a roll nearly as big as she was. She staggered a little and set it on her bread plate. Jodi wasn’t sure if Tank was actually going to use the gigantic butter knife or not. Jodi shouldn’t have wondered about it. Tank was already tearing the roll into tiny bits.

  “I love this place,” Tank said, her mouth full.

  Blue actually smiled. A real, amused smile. His eyes twinkled and he looked at Jodi, and then the smile faded. He looked down, adjusting the papers.

  “I, um, organized everything last night,” he said.

  Jodi nodded, pretending that he hadn’t made her breath catch yet again. She grabbed one of the rolls, and she used the butter knife to cut it in half and spread some butter on it.

  “I noticed.” She sounded absurdly formal. “It looks like you found something.”

  He nodded. “I recognized the pattern, even before you two mentioned a curse.”

  He thumbed through the papers, then set the ones with yellow Post-its on top. They had been paper-clipped together.

  “See, the first thing, what happened here, it’s what happened before.” Then he glanced up, his gaze meeting Jodi’s, before he looked down again. “It’s what happened to you.”

  His voice was soft, almost hesitant, definitely apologetic. Jodi set the butter knife down, feeling odd since he was so upset.

  “Except I think there might have been one difference.”

  “Just get to it.” Tank sprayed crumbs as she spoke. She had actually tunneled into the roll and was pulling out the soft yeasty center.

  Blue smiled a little, but the smile was distracted, as if he hadn’t been able to control it. The smile was just a bit sad.

  “This guy,” Blue said, “this guy introduces himself. He says he’s Bluebeard and he’ll cut off her head.”

  Jodi frowned. “My visitor didn’t say that.”

  “On the first meeting, that never happened with my—the women—in the past.” Blue rubbed a hand over his face. “Sorry.”

  Jodi put out her hand, almost touched him, and then thought the better of it. The last thing she wanted to do was feel that spark again. She needed to concentrate.

  “But the Fairy Tale Stalker identifies himself,” Jodi said.

  Tank shoved aside the roll and grabbed some of the appetizer. It was some kind of caviar, and she just put her hands in it.

  Jodi almost chastised her, then thought the better of it. Tank wasn’t going to listen anyway.

  “In a strange voice,” Blue said. “He spoke faster and with a higher pitch. And the first victim said he sounded almost panicked.”

  Tank’s arms were black with caviar. She stood up, dripping on the linen tablecloth. “Like he was breaking through the curse.”

  “How could he do that?” Jodi turned to Blue. He was watching Tank with disgust on his face. “You had no idea this was happening to you, right?”

  Blue set his bread plate aside, as if Tank had just put him off food forever. “That’s right,” he said. “I had no idea what was happening. But I didn’t have a fairy tale to go on. I mean, everyone knows the story of Bluebeard, right? And if I had known—”

  “I thought you couldn’t feel the curse,” Tank said.

  “There were the odd memories I told you about,” Blue said, “and dreams. Nightmares. I had never heard of dedicated dreaming, but maybe this guy has.”

  “Dedicated dreaming?” Tank asked.

  “It’s a learned skill where you take control of your dreams,” Jodi said, trying to ignore the dripping caviar.

  “You can do that?” Tank asked.

  “Some people can,” Blue said. “It’s one of the techniques they teach you in rehab.”

  “Maybe that’s it,” Jodi said, hoping her doubts weren’t coming through. “Or maybe the curse isn’t as powerful with him. Tank mentioned that a curse made in childhood was stronger than one made in adulthood.”

  Tank tilted her head back and let caviar drip off her fingers into her mouth. Then she used the edge of her shirt to wipe off her face, leaving little caviar prints on the fabric.

  “There could be a million reasons for curses to have different strengths,” Tank said, the words a bit mushy because her mouth was still full. She chewed for a moment, swallowed, and added, “This stalker dude is a different guy. He probably has different magic, and it might interfere with the curse, or give him some insight or something.”

  “Or this has happened to him before,” Blue said. “Just because it’s the first mention in the paper doesn’t mean it’s the first time it has happened to him.”

  Jodi looked at him. Blue’s mouth was a thin line. She wasn’t sure she had ever seen anyone look so tense before.

  At that moment, the pager went off.

  Tank cursed and dove into her napkin, leaving a caviar trail from the bowl to her hiding spot.

  “Is there a reason you’re such a slob, Tank?” Jodi asked as she accepted the page.

  Tank didn’t answer. Jodi knew she wouldn’t. Jodi had half expected to see Blue’s smile again, but he didn’t even seem to hear her. He was thumbing through the stack of paper, as if he was looking for something.

  He didn’t even attempt to cover it all up when the waiter came back in with their meals. First the waiter removed the appetizer dish. Then he took out a small cleaning tool and scraped off the top of the table onto a tray, scraping the caviar-covered napkin hiding Tank with it.

  Blue started to say something, but Jodi put a hand on his arm, silencing him. The warmth of his skin made her palm tingle. He looked at her, arm twitching as if he wanted to move it away.

  She shook her head slightly, but if pressed, she wasn’t sure if she could tell him that she wanted him to remain quiet or to keep his arm in the same place.

  Or both.

  Probably both.

  The waiter set their plates down with a flourish, asked them if they wanted anything else, and they both shook their heads. The napkin on the dirty tray
didn’t move.

  The waiter picked it all up and carried it out of the room, closing the door behind him.

  “Do you think he hurt Tank?” Blue asked. He still hadn’t moved his arm.

  “No,” Jodi said. She’d seen Tank do similar things, particularly when she encountered food she liked. This gave Tank a direct route into the kitchen. “I think she’ll be just fine.”

  “Should I wait for her to come back?”

  “It’s Tank,” Jodi said. “Who knows when she’ll be back.”

  “Good point,” he said.

  He hadn’t moved his arm. She hadn’t moved her hand. He gave her an awkward look, then set the paperwork to one side, narrowly missing the damp caviar stain that the waiter’s scraping tool couldn’t remove.

  Then Blue grabbed his own napkin and slowly, gingerly, started to move his arm.

  Jodi caught the hint and lifted her hand. She almost spoke, but she wasn’t sure what she could say. Did you feel that too? seemed trite and a bit needy. Wow, that was interesting could cover anything but was either an understatement or a bit dismissive, depending on her tone. And I’m sorry, I know there’s a spark but you’re a little too dangerous for me was, well, too honest for her tastes.

  So she said nothing. Instead she handed him the large salad bowl with the watermelon salad. It was one of her favorites, filled with watermelon, watercress, mint, cilantro, pine nuts, and something else. Normally, she would tell him to leave some for Tank, but she had a hunch Tank was making a pig of herself in the kitchen.

  Jodi could only hope that the city health inspector didn’t show up today, or if he did, she hoped that Echoes was willing to pay the city a huge bribe to overlook whatever Tank was doing.

  Blue put the salad next to his three small prime rib sliders. Jodi took one of the sliders off her plate and set it on her bread plate in case Tank returned and wanted more food.

  Then Jodi said, “You were looking for something a moment ago. What was it?”

  Blue had taken a bite of the salad. He swallowed, then said, “I was trying to get a picture of the time frame. This has been going on for a while.”

  Jodi nodded. She hadn’t looked closely, but she was certain the stalker had been in the news for at least a few weeks. “Did it take a while with you?”

  He frowned, then shook his head. “It was a long time ago.”

  She would have thought that he would remember how long it took from the first sighting until the women ended up dead. He had sounded almost cavalier, and that bothered her.

  He still wasn’t looking at her either. Then he set his fork down and rubbed a hand over his face.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know if I can be much help.”

  You’re the original Bluebeard, she almost said. Of course you’ll be of help.

  Instead, she waited. She had learned through her clients that it was better to let them talk rather than jump in immediately. Often the first sentence that they uttered had little to do with the real problem.

  “I—It—” He sighed, kept his head down, and then shook it slowly. “I spent most of my life putting everything out of my mind. It was a long time ago, but it’s more than that. I really tried not to think about it. I worked at forgetting, and what I couldn’t forget I tried to destroy with drink. When they came out with that study that alcohol destroyed brain cells, I prayed that the study was right. Because I didn’t have enough courage to do those drugs, you know the ones that really do destroy your brain. They also put your inhibitions down in unpredictable ways, and I was unpredictable enough. Alcohol, at least, deadened you, and if you drank enough, it just made you pass out. The other stuff—it was too scary for me. But I would have used it if I thought I could control myself and it would have destroyed my brain. I would have.”

  Her breath caught. She had never heard anyone be so very honest. She wasn’t sure what to say to it.

  He raised his head, blinked those beautiful blue eyes at her, and smiled ruefully. “T.M.I., right, as one of the teenagers in my group therapy session would say. I know. I’m sorry. I’m usually not an oversharer. I just wanted you to understand why I can’t just trip this stuff off my tongue. I really honestly never talked with anyone about it before.”

  “Except Tank,” she said.

  “I don’t talk to Tank,” he said. “She talks to me.”

  “She has a thing for you,” Jodi said.

  “No. She’s a rescuer, haven’t you noticed? She likes damaged creatures. She likes rehabilitating them. She often called me her greatest challenge.” Then he let out a small ironic laugh. “Which is exactly what Dr. Hargrove called me too.”

  “For different reasons,” Jodi said. “Imagine what he would think if you were honest with him.”

  Blue shook his head. “Dr. Hargrove lives in the world we’re sitting in. The rich, the famous, the troubled. He thrives on it. But he would never work with the really difficult people, the psychopaths, the criminally insane. He even passes off the sociopaths to some of the other therapists there.”

  “So he doesn’t consider you a psychopath or a sociopath,” Jodi said. She found that interesting. She knew what both were—who didn’t, working in Hollywood?—and she usually avoided them. Although it wasn’t always possible to avoid the sociopath in Hollywood. The sociopath could charm and work the system but had no real respect for the rules, no real ethics. The Hollywood environment—the quick rewards for a lot of talk and a lot of game—attracted a lot of sociopaths.

  It attracted a few psychopaths as well, but those guys usually went out with a bang, often taking people with them. Psychopaths were truly nuts, while sociopaths could function in society. And she had found, in her not-so-limited experience (she had actually met Charles Manson back in the day), that psychopaths were easy to recognize, whether they were on or off drugs.

  She hadn’t pegged Blue as either when she met him, which seemed odd to her now, because had he really been the killer everyone claimed, then she would have noticed something off besides his eye contact. And technically, she should have been wary of anyone who was as charming as he was, particularly with his history, since charm was often such a large part of the sociopath.

  Still, she found it fascinating that Dr. Hargrove, who sounded like he had a hefty survival instinct, didn’t consider Blue a sociopath or a psychopath, even after repeated encounters with him. Fascinating and a bit of a relief.

  “I guess I hadn’t thought of Dr. Hargrove’s reluctance to treat people he didn’t like in relation to me,” Blue said. “I guess—sometimes, you know, it’s reflexive. The charm. You think people will get along with you no matter what. But sociopaths can be charming.”

  “Charming but empty,” Jodi said.

  Blue nodded. He pushed one of the sliders around but didn’t pick it up.

  “Don’t you find it important that your therapist thought you were just a normal guy with a huge problem long before we discovered the curse?” Jodi asked.

  Blue shrugged. “I was lying to him.”

  She gave him a small smile, but he didn’t see it. He still wasn’t looking at her. “All patients in rehab lie. And besides, sociopaths and psychopaths are really obvious if you spend a lot of time with them.”

  “You know this?” Blue asked, bringing his head up.

  She nodded. “I’ve met a few in my day. How come you don’t know this?”

  “I only know about them from books,” he said. “Dr. Hargrove sends the real crazies to other facilities if he can.”

  “Books?” Jodi repeated.

  “When I’m sober, I can’t sleep,” Blue said. “So I read. And guess what the center has. Lots of psychology texts and manuals. If I was truly paranoid, and maybe I am, I would have diagnosed myself long ago.”

  Jodi tilted her head just a little. “Everyone who reads those books diagnoses themselves. You did, right?”

  He picked up one of the sliders as if he thought about eating it, then he set it down again. “I didn’t fit
into the categories. I figured that the diagnostic stuff written for the Greater World didn’t know how to take into account the magical ones.”

  “That’s probably true,” Jodi said. “But don’t you think we’re enhanced humans?”

  He frowned at her. “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning we’re just like them but with magic,” she said.

  “How can you be just like normal people when you have a major difference like magic?” he asked.

  “I don’t think there are normal people,” Jodi said. “I think we’re all different from each other.”

  “And Tank? Is she normal people?”

  “Well, she’s not entirely human, now is she?” Jodi said. “So I’m only talking about us. Those of us who can pass, to use an old-fashioned phrase.”

  “Pass,” he muttered. “I guess that’s what I’ve been doing.”

  “Yet believing yourself to be secretly different,” Jodi said.

  “They say that’s one of the signs of alcoholism,” he said. “Believing in your own difference even in the face of evidence to the contrary.”

  “But you are different from the mortals,” Jodi said. “The charm magic, the curse, they don’t have those things.”

  He looked up. That sad look extended to his eyes. He had a somewhat doomed quality, as if he knew himself better than anyone else. “Charm magic and a curse,” he said. “In mortal terms, charisma and bad luck. They’re not real, Jodi. It’s what you do with what you have that makes you real.”

  Her breath caught. His honesty astounded her, and so did his willingness to see the worst in himself. Maybe that was part of it; if she had thought she had done such horrible things without much memory of them, she would think the worst of herself too.

  “What you do with what you have,” she repeated. “Well, you figured out that you had charm and it attracted women, and in attracting women, you put them in danger, so you made yourself as unattractive as possible, did what you could to avoid them, and tried hard not to hurt anyone, am I right?”

  He nodded.

  “So,” she said, “not realizing it was a curse, thinking it part of you, you did the best you could to neutralize all of those things that harmed people. Seems to me that you did really well.”