Wickedly Charming

by Kristine Grayson

  Mellie looked at LaTisha. “White’s her maiden name,” Mellie said.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” LaTisha said and hustled her to the nearest cab.

  Chapter 31

  The portal dumped Charming, Imperia, and Grace in the reception room of Charming’s attorney’s office.

  The building was squat and made of stone. It had stood in this site for more than a thousand years and had once been a wine cellar and a dungeon. It had windows, but only because someone—about five hundred years ago—had pushed out a few of the giant round stones that made up the wall and had glassed in the front. To see out, you’d have to crawl into the circular opening, something Charming couldn’t do (his shoulders were too wide) but Grace or Imperia could if they were so inclined.

  He had no idea why they would be so inclined. Despite the fact that the janitorial staff scrubbed the walls nightly, they still had a coating of moss. Water dripped through them, making the entire place smell slightly damp.

  It was also chilly—the kind of chilly that caves deep underground got. Some trees grew in the interior—the reception desk was made out of one of the larger fallen branches—and they used that water to thrive. Their trunks went through the roof in several places and their canopies hid the building from any inquisitive visitors.

  To come to this office, you had to know it was here.

  Attorneys in the Kingdoms were great scholars and even greater magicians, able to use words and spells to sway judges and peers, which was what the juries were called here. Often cases got adjudicated in front of the greatest local authority—the King, in the case of the Third Kingdom, where Charming lived.

  The last thing Charming wanted to do was go in front of his father.

  Charming’s attorney had the largest client list in the Third Kingdom. She often didn’t have time for someone who dropped in unannounced.

  Charming hoped today would be different.

  He led the girls up to the reception desk. Grace was clinging to his hand so tightly that she cut off the circulation. He wanted to comfort her, but he couldn’t let go of Imperia’s hand. It was trembling ever so slightly, but he knew if he mentioned that to Imperia, she would pretend everything was just fine.

  Fortunately, the receptionist was someone Charming knew. William the Younger, he was called, even though he was an only child. But he had gotten the name as the apprentice to Charming’s valet, also named William, back when everyone thought William the Younger had no magic. Turned out he had an organizational magic, one that was more geared to legal niceties than to the proper way to thread a needle.

  He smiled at the girls. They smiled back.

  It bothered Charming that he had come to this office so often that his girls liked the receptionist.

  “Is Gustava in?” he asked.

  “You caught her between cases,” William said. “I trust this is important?”

  “Urgent,” Charming said.

  “Then go in.”

  “I need to leave the girls out here,” he said. No way was he going to let them overhear what their mother had done this time. “But they need to be watched at all times.”

  “Da-a-ad!” Somehow Imperia had made that word three syllables. Three upset syllables.

  “Not because of you, baby,” Charming said. “It’s just a bad day, and I want to make sure you girls are being taken care of.”

  Grace hadn’t let go of his hand. “Can I come with you?” she asked quietly.

  Usually that tone, so serious and so needy, had a lot of sway with him, maybe too much. But not today.

  “William will keep an eye on you,” Charming said gently. “Fortunately, you brought your book.”

  “I didn’t,” Imperia said.

  “We have plenty to read,” William said. “I even have a rather fascinating history of the Third Kingdom somewhere around here….”

  Charming left him searching for the book—which Imperia would not like—and made his way down the snaky arched corridor to Gustava’s office.

  The damp smell faded here because Gustava kept a fire burning in the corridor’s fireplace. The air smelled of wood smoke. She liked her office warm, and she hated the dampness so common to this part of the Kingdom, so she burned excess fuel just to keep herself comfortable.

  And, unlike most people, she loathed the outdoors—and with good reason. It terrified her, and nothing she or anyone else did made that terror go away.

  Charming knocked on the solid oak door, then pushed it open. It groaned as it moved, which he thought appropriate for a door that weighed more than Grace did.

  Gustava’s office was beautifully appointed, with another fireplace—this one better vented than the one in the corridor. A patchwork fur rug, made from the pelts of half a dozen animals, covered the area in front of the fireplace, and another decorated the area in front of the desk.

  The office had no windows, but made up for the lack with grand paintings of other buildings, indoor scenes, and one rather gruesome oil of a raven being strangled by a beautiful woman.

  On closer inspection, anyone would realize that the woman was a young version of Gustava herself, a gift from a grateful client years ago who wanted to free Gussie from the terrors that held her so deeply hostage.

  She loved the painting, but it hadn’t freed her. Charming doubted anything would.

  When Gussie saw him, she got up from behind her desk and came around to give him a hug. She was almost as tall as he was, thin in an ascetic way, wearing scholar’s robes. Her chin was long and pointed—a witch’s chin, like those out of the wood etchings that used to accompany the early volumes of Grimms’ fairy tales. Her nose was pointed as well. Even with those flaws, she had been a beauty when she was young, although never the beauty her stepsister had been.

  It was Charming’s fault that Gussie hid herself in these offices, Charming’s fault that she was terrified to step outdoors. He hadn’t realized the power of magic when he was young, and he told the wrong person—whom, he would never know—that Ella’s stepsisters had treated her cruelly because they were jealous of her looks.

  Her stepsisters had treated Ella badly, in the way of teenage girls, but not because they hated her looks, but because she made them feel intellectually inferior. She could read; they couldn’t. She had an education; they didn’t. She had known and loved her father; they had never known theirs.

  Charming hadn’t known that his careless comment to a handful of unknown people would result in an event that marred his wedding and (he privately thought) tainted his marriage forever.

  Songbirds—dozens of them—carried Ella’s veil, lifted her train, and sang as she walked down the aisle. But the crows and ravens, jealous of the songbirds’ special place in the ceremony, had attacked Ella’s stepsisters, plucking out their eyes.

  He could still hear the screams. Initially he thought it all caused by some kind of bird magic. Only later did he learn that birds had to be spelled by a human to behave in that way—from the songbirds to the ravens—and he never found out who.

  But he did discover that the stepsisters were falsely accused. He had hired a wise woman to reverse the spell. When she couldn’t, she did her best, along with a healer, to give the sisters back their sight.

  Gussie’s sister had refused the gift, saying she found comfort in darkness. But Gussie took it, and then used that sight to study law, so that the perpetrator of that crime against her—whoever it might be—would eventually be punished in a proper and fair way, not in a magical violent way.

  Charming had supported her in her studies, although Ella never approved. Gussie and Charming started up a true friendship, and when his old lawyer retired shortly after Charming’s divorce, Gussie had taken him on as a client. She had helped him establish his Kingdom bookstore in a way that would prevent his father from having control, and she enabled Charming to emancipate himself from his family in other ways, mostly protecting his girls from his father’s all-powerful touch.

  Gussie felt
fragile in his arms, her bones brittle. And as she stepped back, he could see the scars around her eyes, scars she never had covered over with any sort of magic, although she did wear stylish glasses that made the scars seem more like a fashion choice than a horrible, disfiguring accident.

  “I take it this isn’t a social visit,” she said.

  “That’s right.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the parchment. He started to hand it to her, but she put her hands up.

  “Put it on the desk,” she said.

  He did, in between leather-bound books so old that they were written in the Kingdom’s first language. Gussie went behind the desk and took out tweezers, pulling the document toward her without touching it.

  “Did I do something wrong in handling it?” he asked, not quite able to keep the fright from his voice.

  She stared at it. “You’re part of the document. It needs you.”

  She spoke almost absently, as if she wasn’t really paying a lot of attention to him.

  “Where did you get this?” she asked after a moment.

  “Ella brought it to my store in the Greater World,” he said.

  She raised her head, her mouth a thin line. “No.”

  He nodded.

  She bit her lower lip, looking younger than she was. “And the girls?”

  “In with William,” he said.

  “Good.” She looked down and studied the document for a long time.

  He made himself stand still, his worry growing the longer she stared at that bit of parchment.

  Finally, he couldn’t take the silence any longer. “It’ll negate itself, right? It’s got a time limit.”

  “It should,” she said. “But I think we need to neutralize it.”

  “Because it tries to undo my girls, doesn’t it?”

  She looked up, her expression so sad that his heart twisted. “I was trying to figure out how to tell you that. I forgot how smart you are on legal matters.”

  He grimaced. “I’m just a worst-case scenario kinda guy.”

  “Thank everything magical that you are,” she said. “Your caution stopped this entire part of our world from unraveling.”

  She moved the parchment aside with the tweezers, then set those in a lead-lined box as if touching the document had contaminated them.

  “I’m going to have to unspell this line by line,” she said, “and search for more hidden meanings. It’ll take time to undo.”

  “And my girls?” he asked.

  “Should be fine, so long as you never sign this document.”

  “I wouldn’t,” he said.

  “But I can’t guarantee what else she’ll try.” Gussie pushed up her glasses with the knuckle of her index finger. “I knew Ella was unhappy, but this—this is serious stuff. This is nasty magic, the kind that I thought she had forsworn.”

  “Forsworn?” he asked.

  Gussie sighed. “I thought, maybe, she was behind the attack at the wedding. I made her swear she would never use magic to harm again.”

  Charming’s breath caught. “Was she behind it?”

  “She said no. I wasn’t in the mood to trust her. But she did seem happy with you then, and that kind of magic isn’t the act of a happy person.”

  Charming nodded. “I never thought she was vindictive. Just self-centered. This could be interpreted as self-centered.”

  “Or,” Gussie said softly, “it could be something else.”

  He looked at her.

  “She would have had to pay someone to do this spell. And maybe that someone took advantage of her, thinking it might harm the entire royal family to lose the girls.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” Charming said.

  “Whoever did this spell,” Gussie said, “had powers well beyond the average magic user here in the Kingdoms. This is one powerful person, and one twisted person. The best thing you can do is find out who Ella got to create the document.”

  “I doubt I’ll ever talk to her again,” he said. “She really wants nothing to do with the three of us. Ever. She wishes we did not exist.”

  Gussie blinked as if the thought hurt her. “Then the document would do that job, but in a way that might have even harmed Ella. Undoing the fabric of the world around us is a dangerous spell, one that can have side effects none of us understand.”

  “So someone is using Ella to get to my family,” he said.

  “Ella is part of your family,” Gussie said, “whether you like it or not.”

  “And yours,” he said.

  “Yes,” Gussie said dryly. “Only I’m not required to interact with her. You are.”

  “Not anymore,” he said. “We agreed that I’d raise the girls and she wouldn’t have to see them again if she didn’t want to.”

  “You agreed to that?”

  “My choice was between that or this damn document,” he said. “Which do you think I’d chose?”

  Gussie leaned back. He realized just how much vehemently he had spoken.

  “Is there any way to protect my girls? I’m terrified to let them leave my sight.”

  “That seems practical at the moment,” Gussie said.

  “It’s not,” he said. “We’re building a life in the Greater World. They have school and friends on their own. They can’t be with me all the time.”

  “For the next few days or so, keep them at your side,” Gussie said. “By then, I’ll know how dangerous Ella’s friends are.”

  “I think we can handle a week,” he said. “But I have no way to fight serious magic. What if someone comes after us?”

  “I can give you a protection spell,” Gussie said. “I’ll recite it over the three of you. But it’ll only protect you against Ella and anyone sent by her. Do you understand?”

  “If someone comes after us with a Greater World weapon, the protection spell won’t work,” he said.

  “Unless Ella asked them to come after you,” Gussie said.

  “So if I know who is threatening my family, I can have you whip up another protection spell?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “But it’s best if you don’t investigate. Let me. You keep an eye on your girls. Get them out of the Kingdoms, because magic is stronger here. And I’ll contact you as soon as I’ve neutralized the document.”

  “Gussie,” he said, “you’re a lifesaver.”

  “No,” she said. “You are.”

  They’d had this bit of banter before, and it always made Charming uncomfortable. “Come see my daughters,” he said, deliberately changing the subject. “You’ll be surprised at how much they’ve grown.”

  “And I can do the protection spell without them even realizing it,” Gussie said.

  “That too,” Charming said. “That too.”

  Chapter 32

  Mellie tried to explain where Cindy Jordan had gotten those interview questions as LaTisha opened the door to the cab. LaTisha shook her head, and slid into the cab. Mellie followed.

  She tried to explain again, but LaTisha held up a very imperious finger. She then bent over her BlackBerry and texted for the entire ride.

  “Can’t we talk about this?” Mellie asked.

  “When we get to the hotel,” LaTisha said as she nodded toward the front of the cab. “When we’re by ourselves.”

  Mellie glanced at the cab driver. He was a big, hulking man whose shaved head was covered with tattoos. He had gold posts running down the outside of both ears.

  Somehow she doubted he was part of the target demographic for her novel. She had a hunch he wouldn’t care if she wrote the book or if she had stolen it from someone who was less media savvy but a better writer.

  She pulled out her cell, hoping for a message from Charming. But nothing appeared on the screen. She had no messages at all.

  As distressed as she felt, she should have had a few messages. Somehow she felt like the entire world had just seen her humiliation.

  But she knew that wasn’t the case. No one would see the interview for hours.

>   The cab finally stopped outside the hotel. Mellie wanted to flee to her ostentatious room and never, ever leave it.

  But she waited as LaTisha paid the driver, then they walked inside together.

  “Act normal,” LaTisha said, as they walked toward the elevator bank.

  Mellie had no idea what normal was. Would she have been giddy after a good interview or just plain tired? Did she ever act normal? She wasn’t sure.

  Still, she managed to keep pace with LaTisha as they walked across the lobby. No one looked at them; no one even seemed to notice them. Mellie hoped that was what LaTisha wanted.

  An elevator stood open and as they got inside, Mellie turned to LaTisha.

  “What the hell happened there?” Mellie asked.

  “Something we’ll discuss away from cameras,” LaTisha said, staring at the little red numbers going steadily upward beside the sliding doors.

  Mellie didn’t see any cameras, but she decided to trust LaTisha. When the elevator stopped, LaTisha got off first, and headed toward her room.

  “What cameras?” Mellie asked, as LaTisha unlocked the door to her room.

  “Security cameras,” LaTisha said. “All the public areas have them.”

  Both women stepped inside.

  “So?” Mellie asked.

  “If any of that crap Cindy Jordan said back there is true, you’re about to become the flavor of the week. Every newscast, every entertainment program, every magazine, and every newspaper will cover your story.”

  “That’s good, right?” Mellie asked.

  “Are you kidding me? They’re going to lump you with all of the horrible publishing scandals of the past decade. You’re going to be the new poster child for an out-of-control industry.”

  “Is the industry out of control?” Mellie asked.

  “No!” LaTisha tossed her purse on a nearby chair. The room wasn’t nearly as fancy as Mellie’s but it was still lovely. A sofa and chair filled the main area, along with a round dining table, and a huge television set. A door opened to the small bedroom. The entire place smelled of lemons.

  “Well, if the industry’s not out of control,” Mellie said, “why would they claim it is?”