Hidden Charm

by Kristine Grayson

And, she remembered, Sonny had told her that there was always a receptionist. She didn’t remember that from the one and only time she’d been here—she’d been so traumatized, learning new things, absorbing the new world she found herself in, that she only remembered things in flashes.

  The comfort smell, the exterior of the Archetype Place, the nearness to some theme park that everyone hated, those she remembered. This interior—which had probably been changed over the decades—seemed completely unfamiliar.

  She swallowed hard, and straightened her shoulders. She’d been a million places without Sonny. She had a decades-long career, for heaven’s sake, and she knew how to function.

  In the Greater World.

  Not in the magical one.

  She had always let Sonny take care of the magic.

  “You know, I’m not here for my health,” said a voice from the desk. The voice was male and had a bit of an accent. It was deep and warm and beautiful, almost musical. “You want to come closer so I can actually see you and maybe help you?”

  The side of sarcasm calmed her.

  She took a step forward and peered over the reception desk only to freeze in surprise. A frog sat on the desktop. It raised its bulging eyes (he raised his bulging eyes?) and stared at her, its (his?) little frog mouth open in a comical, and non-frog-like O.

  “Okay,” she said, voice trembling a little. “I’m here. Can you see me now?”

  The frog didn’t answer her. It didn’t move at all. It was sitting on top of a lily pad, and near its legs there was a square old-fashioned intercom system that was covered in frog footprints.

  “Um, hello,” she said, wondering if she should wave her hand. If this were one of the studio offices on one of the lots, she would think the creature was some kind of three-D animation, a projection.

  But here, it could be anything.

  “I’m, um, here to talk with someone. Please,” she said.

  Talking to a frog made her nervous. She really had been in the mortal side of the Greater World too long. She wiped her sweaty palms on the sides of her silk pants.

  “Yes, yes, I understand that.” A man stood behind the desk, his hands on the back of another brown chair. Only this one was an ancient office chair that she hadn’t noticed before.

  Had it been there a moment ago? She didn’t think it had. She wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure of anything.

  The frog still hadn’t moved. And the man behind it—well, he had just appeared too, right?

  She made herself meet his gaze. His eyes were an astounding green, almost emerald. She could get lost in them—maybe she had gotten lost in them, she wasn’t sure. And his face was long and lean with high cheekbones, and a perfectly apportioned nose. His blond hair needed trimming. It fell to his collar in a haphazard way, and, she realized, a little startled, that the edges looked chopped off, as if someone had hacked them with a knife.

  He wore a polo shirt that looked old enough to have turned a little yellow in the wash. The shirt stretched across his perfectly formed abs, and tapered down into a pair of black jeans.

  He took her breath away, the way that some of the totally gorgeous actors (and actresses) that she had met through her job occasionally did. But the breath always came back, especially as she noticed the human details about them—the chewed fingernails, the nicotine stains on their teeth, the cold arrogance in their eyes.

  Her breath wasn’t coming back. And she couldn’t take her gaze off him.

  Some kind of magic, some kind that she didn’t recognize, some kind that made her heart constrict and open at the same time, some kind that made her want to walk right to him, and wrap her arms around him, and say, Please hold me, please. You have no idea—

  She shook the thought away, a trick she had known forever, and it was only marginally successful here, or maybe less than marginally successful. Because she could look away now (at that motionless frog with its mouth still open in a gigantic weird O) and she could breathe (a little) and she had a hold of herself (kinda), but she still wanted to reach out to him, to be near him—

  She made herself look farther away. At the couch and the chairs (still empty) and that skewed table.

  She blinked and made herself say the words she had been practicing for the entire drive.

  “I’m here,” she said, “because I need help.”

  Chapter 5

  Two-part magic, something he hadn’t done in—decades?—God, he wasn’t sure. Henry had magically appeared in the Archetype Place, and the appearance had been damn near automatic. He hadn’t thought about it at all.

  It just happened.

  He hadn’t even grabbed real clothes before he had done so. He had been wearing a torn pair of jogging shorts from the 1970s, shorts that had once been light brown, but which were now some version of muddy gray, and a T-shirt that advertised the now-defunct Fish Shanty, complete with the open whale’s mouth.

  He ran a hand through his hair, realized he hadn’t combed it in days, maybe weeks (even though he had showered: he did have to live with himself) and ran his tongue over his teeth. Awful, awful, awful. He had shown up in full slob mode—but fortunately, his magical appearance skills were rusty, so he wasn’t behind the desk per se, he had arrived behind a row of ancient wood filing cabinets that he considered an earthquake hazard, but Griselda believed was still important to something or other (which he didn’t understand).

  So he spelled himself with the dressiest clothes he owned, which turned out to be a polo shirt that barely fit, jeans that had stylish rips in them (although the rips hadn’t been put there stylishly, but rather sloppily, because he hadn’t yet thrown them out) and no shoes. Apparently he didn’t have dressy shoes. He didn’t really have good shoes at all. He’d gone All Froggy All The Time, and that had even had an impact on his feet.

  He had also spelled a toothbrush (loaded with toothpaste) and a comb and managed, somehow, to clean himself up at superspeed, so doing that really made this three-part magic, not two-part magic, and he really didn’t question the impulse.

  He couldn’t, because it had all happened so very, very fast.

  His magical avatar, the one he had lived in for so long it felt like his real body, had frozen on the desk. He had never realized just how comical human expressions were on his froggy face, but that look of surprise seemed like one of the badly done commercials for cat litter or something, where the cat’s mouth had been replaced by a human’s mouth.

  The woman in front of his desk had said something while he was frantically trying to make himself presentable, and he hadn’t heard it. And that made him feel awkward and bad and worried.

  She was the reason he was here, after all. He had enough control of his magic and himself to know that much.

  Then he stepped out, still feeling like a total slob, but he had to see her in person. He had to see her in his human form, because meeting a woman like that—like her—in his frog form was too much like his past, like Tiana, and all of that promise and all of that loss—and why was he thinking about his dead wife and another relationship and meeting a woman all at the same time?

  God, he barely—he didn’t—have his magic or his mind under control, not really.

  And then he raised his gaze, and saw her, this woman who was nothing like Tiana, and who had inspired in him this feeling that he needed to see her with his own, non-froggy eyes.

  She had been beautiful as she walked in—at least to those froggy eyes, which always saw things slightly distorted, as if he wore someone else’s scratched, thick Coke-bottle glasses. Part of his thought process had been that she might not have been that beautiful—that he might have misperceived—and another part had been that maybe she was even more beautiful than his frog eyes could perceive, and the next thing he knew, he—the real him, Henry, the man—had been standing behind those file cabinets, looking like the guy who ate three-day-old take-out in his messy basement apartment.

  Not that he had a messy basement apartment—he had a house, thank you
very much, and it wasn’t all that messy because he didn’t have a lot of stuff—but he did eat take-out, just not the three-day-old kind—and he rarely dressed up for anyone, not ever, not that wearing a polo shirt that barely fit from a golf course that had been rebranded a dozen times since he bought the shirt, and ancient jeans, and no shoes was dressing up.

  She said, “I’m, um, here to talk to someone, please,” and her voice was as lovely (more lovely?) than he ever could have imagined. She had a slight accent—a Kingdom accent, but which Kingdom, he couldn’t quite tell. She stressed the edges of words with hard consonants (tal-K) and it sounded both familiar and unfamiliar—all those things he had observed in his decades as the receptionist here at the Archetype Place, and all of the things he had never really paid attention to.

  And her—oh, Good Lord, she was magnificent. She had a short cap of truly golden hair that hugged her face as if the entire look had been photoshopped. Her features were delicate, except for her eyes, which were layered in color, starting on the outside of the iris with the same gold as her hair, and working into a dark chocolate brown in the middle.

  Those eyes were red-rimmed and a little puffy as if she’d been crying, which just broke his heart, because women like this (people like this) shouldn’t cry, and her lower lip, perfectly formed, was chapped because it looked like she had been biting it.

  She wore an expensive white tunic over golden silk pants that matched that magnificent cap of hair, and there were gold bangles on her wrist and a gold necklace on her neck and a gold ring on the third finger of her left hand, and his heart plummeted—

  God, he had just found the most beautiful, attractive woman in the entire world and she was married.

  She was looking toward his frog avatar so he stepped forward, put his hands on the back of the chair that he was supposed to sit in when he was in his human form (he was never here in his human form, so he never sat there) and said, “Yes, yes, I understand that,” and tried not to sound annoyed (had she been anyone else, he would have sounded annoyed. His default sentence structure, his default tone of voice, his damn default, was annoyed).

  Then her gaze went up as if she had not seen him before now. Her eyes widened slightly as they met his, and he—oh, God, his heart leapt all over again. Her gaze was as strong as a touch. He had only felt this one before in his entire life, and it hadn’t been as strong as this. It had been a little more desperate—after all, what kind of man wanted to be cursed into frog form for the rest of his life (him apparently, since he voluntarily chose that form now, when he wasn’t cursed)—and he had looked at Tiana, and she had crouched to talk with him because she had been so nice, and maybe he had been responding to the nice, because right now, this woman hadn’t done much more than say she needed to talk to someone.

  His throat had gone dry. If he tried to speak again, he really would croak, and wouldn’t that be embarrassing? He wanted to reach forward and beckon her closer, just so he could see what kind of perfume she wore or if she was wearing heels that would make her seem taller than she actually was. He wanted to hear her voice again, to stand next to her, and see how her golden hair shone in the sun. He wanted to—

  Ah, hell. She was married. Married. And he had to keep that in mind. Because his thoughts were all out of control. She was probably sparking something old in him, a memory, a need, maybe something about her or her magic got through his defenses and he needed to pay attention to the defenses, not to her.

  Then she looked away from him toward the chairs and the couch, a spot of color in her cheeks, and he—oh, hell—he wanted to say something, anything, to get her to look at him again.

  “I’m here,” she said softly, her head down, “because I need help.”

  The words were like cold water. Or they should have been. Maybe like an ice dribble down the back of his neck, reminding him that she wasn’t here for him or anything else. She was here because she needed something.

  Help.

  He cleared his dry throat, thinking maybe he should go back into his froggy persona, but that magic seemed very far away. Almost untouchable—which it had never been (or rather, which it hadn’t been since Tiana broke the curse)—and that felt odd too. It was something he was going to have to examine, something he was going to have to figure out.

  And before he could do that, he needed to help this woman.

  “Okay, um, yeah,” he said. “Help. What kind of help?”

  He didn’t sound businesslike or even Froggy-like. He didn’t sound important or strong or anything he truly wanted to be. He sounded uncertain.

  But at least he didn’t sound annoyed.

  Her beautiful eyes filled with tears. She looked to the side, almost as if she didn’t want him to know about the tears.

  “Sonny,” she said. “Someone’s taken him.”

  “Sonny?” Henry repeated, before he could even realize he was going to speak. Sonny? Why would she think he knew someone named Sonny—and then he did realize he knew someone named Sonny.

  Sonny—Alessandro Zuhayr Tarik Leonardus—one of the Charmings, from the Sixth? Eighth? Ninth? Kingdom. But whenever Sonny had discussed his partner, Henry had simply assumed that Sonny meant another man. Not a woman this delicate and beautiful, and his wife.

  Although she hadn’t expressly said that Sonny was her husband. She had just said that he was missing.

  “Sonny,” Henry repeated a second time. “Alessandro? That Sonny?”

  “Yes,” she said, frowning hard, as if she couldn’t understand why Henry was causing her trouble. “He’s missing.”

  “And you know this how?” Henry asked. He shouldn’t have asked it. Froggy wouldn’t have asked it, ever, because Froggy didn’t care about what anyone was doing here. All Froggy cared about was whether that person needed to see Griselda or Mellie. Usually they needed Griselda, because Mellie was all about outside perception, and Griselda was actually about helping people with their day-to-day lives.

  The woman narrowed her eyes as she looked at him, and his heart pounded. He had done something wrong. (Of course he had done something wrong. This was why he always hid out as Froggy. People expected Froggy to be unconventional, but not Henry. People never expected Henry to be anything but polite and nice and super competent—and God, God, God, he hated disappointing her. He hated it.)

  “I’m his wife.” She sounded condescending and confused and disappointed all at the same time. “I stopped by the house this morning, and he—”

  She shook her head, the tears threatening again. And now Henry was in a real dilemma because he wanted to put his arms around her and he wanted to ask her more questions about the disappearance and he wanted to ask her if she knew that her husband was being unfaithful—with men. Because he was. Always stopping by with a new man and a new problem, usually helping newly crossed over Kingdom survivors find a way to leave, and almost all of them gay men, although there was the occasional transgender person and—Sonny, Sonny was well known in the LGBTQ community in Los Angeles, and he was the go-to guy to help LGBTQ Kingdom survivors transition from the Kingdom(s) to the Greater World.

  That Sonny.

  She had just confirmed it was that Sonny, and boy, oh, boy was Henry confused.

  Wife.

  Sonny had a beard? Sonny? The most out, comfortable, happy gay man Henry had ever met? That Sonny?

  “You’re not listening, are you?” she asked. Apparently she had been talking and Henry hadn’t been listening which even Tiana had complained about. He had incredible powers of concentration, but no real ability to multitask. If a thought took him down a side road, all of him went, all the time, as fast as possible.

  “Sorry,” Henry said, feeling like an idiot. The woman attracted him so much that she actually brought him out of his self-imposed shell, and then he mentally goes off and doesn’t listen to her. What kind of man was he?

  An out-of-practice one, apparently. Or a not very good one. Or something.

  “Look,” he said. “You’re g
oing to need to talk to Griselda. She handles things like this. Let me get her.”

  He reached for the intercom, saw his little froggy prints all over it, and winced, thinking of the slime and the dead frog skin and the fact that he would have to lean close to his avatar to contact Selda this way.

  And he didn’t want to lean close. He didn’t want anything to do with his froggy self at the moment, which he was not going to examine.

  He slid out from behind the desk. He was going to have to go down the hall and get Selda.

  “Who should I tell her is here?” he asked, feeling stupidly formal. If he had known that Sonny had a wife, he would have known the name of Sonny’s wife, but he didn’t, and here he was, and there was that question right behind his eyes again. Did you know? Did Sonny tell you? How could you not know?

  “Rapunzel,” the woman said, her voice flat.

  And Henry stopped. Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let-down-your-hair Rapunzel? He almost asked, but it wasn’t his place.

  His stupid, uncontrollable gaze went to her hair, that beautiful golden hair, and her cheeks flushed even worse.

  Then, almost in retaliation, her gaze went to his feet, which were the only part of him that sorta-kinda-held onto the frog curse. His feet were unbelievably wide, and his toes unnaturally long. At least he had five toes, and they weren’t webbed. He’d always been deathly afraid they would become webbed.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said, and fled down the hall.

  The floor was cold against his bare feet. Most of the doors were closed, temporary offices for temporary employees, most of whom eventually moved on to their own businesses. A few of the doors led to storage areas, which even he—back in the days when he had hung out here in his human form—hadn’t even looked at.

  But at the end of that narrow hallway was Selda’s office. The door to that office was almost never closed—at least, not in his memory.

  Selda’s office was the most comfortable place in the building. Big brown couches, spider plants cascading off tables, macramé planters hanging from the ceiling, rescue cats and rescue dogs hugging their favorite pillows. Usually she had a fire going in the hearth, but lately it had been too hot—which he had only known about because she complained about the heat and the lack of ability to put the fire on.