Charming Blue

by Kristine Grayson

  Right. As if Blue believed that. He hadn’t spent any time with a woman alone in decades, maybe a century or two. And never had he done so sober.

  He was terrified. He tried to tell Dr. Hargrove that he was making a mistake, but Dr. Hargrove wouldn’t listen. He blathered on about change and fear and conquering fears, not really knowing who he was talking to about what.

  Then Blue pulled out the center’s regulations: No visitors in the first sixty days of incarceration. (He actually used the word “incarceration” to annoy Dr. Hargrove; Dr. Hargrove made mistakes when he was annoyed.)

  Dr. Hargrove had nodded sagely and said, “I’m aware of that, Blue, but we’ve had you here several times before and our normal methods haven’t worked. Perhaps trying something out of the ordinary will make a difference.”

  Dr. Hargrove had an answer for everything.

  Which meant that Blue had a choice. Either he could do what Dr. Hargrove wanted, or he could leave the center. If he left, he wasn’t sure he would ever be allowed back. Not that they had threatened him; they hadn’t. He just had a sense that at some point, they might tell him to try somewhere else.

  He rather liked it here. It was one of the few places where he felt like he could be himself (or rather, the part of himself that was tolerable) and not worry about the effect he was having on others. The center itself kept him organized, and because of the adamancy of his own requests, the center protected vulnerable people from him—women and children (not that he had ever hurt a child, but he had never thought himself capable of hurting a woman either, and he had done so, repeatedly).

  The center also set up a schedule for him and helped him follow it. An early morning run (on the grounds, with security near him), breakfast, therapy session, lunch, rest, swim, dinner, group session, entertainment (movies, books, music—anything solitary, since that was what he chose), lights-out. Then it would all start over again. The rhythm of it was predictable, soothing, and there was always someone to protect him from himself.

  Except right now. It would be so simple to walk away, so simple to give up. But he wasn’t the kind of man to give up. If he had been, he would have killed himself a long time ago.

  He just had to find a way to comply with Dr. Hargrove’s admonition and yet somehow stay away from that woman.

  He had to go back to who he had been a long, long time ago, before the name-calling, before the murders, before Bluebeard.

  He had to go back to the days when he was a Charming. More than that, he had to go back to the days when he was a prince and used to getting his way.

  It felt like putting on a costume. He stood a bit straighter. He felt a little taller.

  Then he grabbed the glass door handle and stepped inside.

  Chapter 5

  The meeting room that Hargrove led Jodi into didn’t look like a standard meeting room. Instead of a conference table with uncomfortable chairs, there were couches with soft cushions and standalone upholstered chairs that were built for comfort. The brown rug was so plush that she wanted to take her shoes off and rub her feet into it. Big square multicolored pillows, the size of the chairs, were piled in one corner of the room. That section of the room had no furniture at all, and she knew from what she had seen from the center’s welcome video years ago that that part of the room was used for group meetings.

  Someone had put fresh coffee and healthy snacks on a sideboard. Before he left, Hargrove told her to help herself.

  She wouldn’t be staying long enough to consume anything. She didn’t want to sit down either. She wasn’t quite sure what to do with herself. The room had no windows (so the paparazzi can’t see you, my dear) and no art on the walls. The walls themselves were a soft beige, which someone somewhere had probably decreed a soothing color.

  She hated the lack of diversity in the room itself.

  Then the door banged open. She whirled. The man who stepped in was no one she knew. Tall, well built, with clothes so perfectly tailored they looked like they had been designed for him. He wore khaki pants, but they didn’t seem casual, perhaps because of the sharp crease running along the center. Even his shirt—a short-sleeved cotton thing that most men would wear wrinkled—looked like it had been freshly ironed.

  He was clean-shaven with perfectly cut black hair. He was, bar none, the most handsome man she had ever seen.

  And she had seen a lot of handsome men. She worked in a city, in an industry, that attracted the most handsome men in the Greater World and some of the handsomest men from the Kingdoms.

  She knew handsome men.

  And this guy, this guy beat them all without a contest. This guy was stunning.

  “I was supposed to see you,” he said, his gaze not quite meeting hers. In fact, it took her a moment to realize he wasn’t looking at her at all. “I’ve done that. I’m going.”

  Her breath caught. This was Bluebeard? This man? This unbelievably gorgeous specimen of a man was the Bluebeard? Really?

  Well, then, she finally understood—on a very deep visceral level—how he had had fifteen wives.

  And she saw where the nickname came from. As the light caught his hair, it filled with dark blue highlights.

  He was backing out of the room when she found her voice.

  “You haven’t watched the news, have you? The Fairy Tale Stalker? He identifies himself as Bluebeard.”

  He closed his eyes and bowed his head. “It’s not me. I can’t get out of here, even if I wanted to.”

  And it sounded like he didn’t want to.

  “That’s what Tanker Belle says, and I didn’t believe her until now.”

  He looked up, his gaze finally meeting hers. He had the most electric blue eyes she had ever seen. Stunning, adding to that amazing face, making him almost irresistible. How the hell was that possible? Was this what the full power of magical charm felt like?

  “Tank sent you?” he asked, then looked down as quickly as he looked up. Suddenly Jodi had the sense that he was afraid of her. Why would the most notorious man in all of fairy tale history be afraid of her?

  “Yes, Tank sent me,” Jodi said. “She can’t get in here anymore. There are wards against fairies around this place.”

  “What?” He seemed genuinely shocked. “No there aren’t. She dropped me inside just over a month ago.”

  “There are now. She can’t talk to you.”

  “I didn’t put up any wards,” he said, threading his fingers together. “I can’t do that kind of thing.”

  He spoke so softly that she could barely hear him, almost as if he was speaking to himself. Yet he was being defensive. This was not at all what she had expected.

  Nor had she expected him to have such beautiful hair, rich and thick and glistening with that hint of blue in the artificial light.

  “I know you can’t,” Jodi said. “You can’t do anything except Charm.”

  He looked up at her again, those blue eyes connecting with hers so strongly that it took all of her strength to keep from stepping backward. Or forward.

  He literally took her breath away. No man had ever done that.

  “What makes you so sure?” he asked. The question wasn’t menacing; it was almost needy.

  “I knew it from the moment you walked in the room. You have only one kind of magic, although you have that in abundance.” Somehow she had managed to tear her concentration away from his physical beauty long enough to glance at his magical aura. Blue, which was expected, but the blue belonged to his charm magic. And he had no other kind of magic. None, not a thread of anything else. Although he had more charm than anyone she had ever met, and that included a man named Charming, who ran The Charming Way Bookstore in Westwood, but who in reality had married Cinderella a long, long time ago and was known to many as the Prince Charming.

  “What are you?” Bluebeard asked.

  Which wasn’t really, when you got down to it, a charming question. It was, in fact, somewhat rude. But she understood what he meant.

  “I’m the daug
hter of chatelaines,” she said. “I can see magic, mostly so I can accommodate it and make the person near me more comfortable. I have a strong domestic magic.”

  “And Tank sent you?” He sounded confused. She didn’t blame him. She would never put the words “Tank” and “domestic” together either.

  “She did,” Jodi said, “because she knows what I do here in the Greater World. I’m what’s called a fixer. I make things happen, or unhappen as the case may be.”

  He frowned. It just creased a small portion of his unlined forehead, making him look intellectual and oh-so-delicious. (And she was freaking herself out, being attracted to Bluebeard, of all people.)

  “How is that related to domestic magic?”

  “Ah,” she said, feeling a bit more comfortable. She had given this speech a million times in her long life. “Domestic magic is all about fixing things so that people enjoy their lives, so that problems go away. Home should be a comfortable, easy place, outside the troubles of the world. So the troubles of the world need to be solved or at least placed at bay. If you take that concept and apply it to work, you get me—a wrangler of the magic by day, fixer by night.”

  Most people smiled when she told them that. He just looked down, as if her words made him uncomfortable.

  “We’ve met,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.

  “More than once,” she said. “And I must say, I didn’t recognize you either.”

  He nodded and bit his lower lip, still not meeting her gaze. “So, Tank sent you to see if I was behind this stalker thing.”

  “No,” Jodi said. “Tank believes you had nothing to do with it. I’m not sure Tank thinks you did anything wrong ever.”

  He shook his head, just a little.

  “She believes you might have some insight into what’s going on.” Jodi took a step toward him. “Do you?”

  He took a step back and hit the door, putting his hand on the knob. “I didn’t even know there was a stalker until you mentioned it.”

  “No television? No radio?”

  “No contact with the outside world for sixty days,” he said. “That includes news. If we watch a movie or a TV show, we watch on DVD.”

  “Hm.” That revelation made her task a little harder. “I don’t even know how to start on this then. The guy appears in women’s bedrooms, declares that he’s Bluebeard and is going to harm them the next time he sees them, and then he disappears. They get terrified, contact the police, and so far, the police haven’t got a clue what to do about it.”

  He swallowed, shook his head again, almost as if he was trying to clear it. His head was low enough to avoid eye contact, but she had the sense he was watching her just the same.

  “How did Tank get involved?” he asked.

  “She wants to prove that it’s not you.”

  He bobbed his head—another nod? If so, it was a private one, meant for him alone. “And how did you get involved?”

  “Tank believes that the entire scenario harms our people here. And she’s afraid that the guy will escalate. She thinks you might have some ideas on how to stop him.”

  He let out a bitter chuckle, then ran a hand through his thick hair. It fell back into place, looking perfect. “Me. That’s rich. I have no idea how to stop anything.”

  “She wants you to help,” Jodi said, not sure what she wanted. All she knew was that she couldn’t leave until he did. He was still blocking the door.

  He brought his head up just a little. “Me.”

  “Yes,” Jodi said, starting to get irritated. Clearly he wasn’t trying to charm her. But she still found him annoyingly attractive—even as he was irritating her.

  He made a soft sound, lowered his head again, then moved it sideways, as if he was arguing with himself. “I doubt I can provide any assistance at all.”

  “Okay then,” Jodi said. She was about to ask him to move when he spoke again.

  “But Tank thinks I can do something.” It was almost a question.

  “Yes,” Jodi said, trying not to let her irritation show again.

  His broad shoulders went up and down as he took a deep breath. It was almost as if he was bracing himself. “I’ll give it a shot then. I owe her. She’s been helping me.”

  Jodi waited. It was a bit like talking to Gunther, only Blue wasn’t physically slow. But he clearly wasn’t used to dealing with people.

  He kept his head down. “Can you give me what information you have?”

  “Do you have an email address?” Jodi asked. “I’ll send you links and video clips. There’s one from KTLA that has a police sketch, which, I must say, looks nothing like you.”

  “Like me now,” he said.

  “In any incarnation,” she said.

  He winced, ran a hand through his hair again, and once again, it fell back into place as if he had never ruffled it. How far gone had this man been to look as horrible as he had all those years?

  “I don’t have an email address,” he said. “No smart phone, no computer, no nothing, not for the duration. Nothing that smacks of outside world. Just bring me some paper.”

  He raised his head slightly, looking at her for a brief moment—a heart-stopping moment in which he looked like he might break. Then he bowed his head, turned the knob on the door, and backed out of the room, closing the door swiftly.

  She stared at it, her heart pounding. He was attractive. He was beyond attractive. He couldn’t meet her eyes. He was nervous or afraid or just plain off his game, and she still found him attractive.

  Which had to be what happened to all those other women. Attractive, blindingly attractive, and then bam, off with their heads, as one of those Alice In Wonderland queens used to say. Of course, Jodi was mixing her literary references. No Alice In Wonderland here, although she did feel as if she had fallen through a rabbit hole.

  She let out a breath and headed for the door. What if he had locked her in here? What if he had trapped her?

  Not that it mattered. She was in a rehab center with people watching, cameras everywhere, someone who could get her out if she needed it.

  He frightened her. Of course, he frightened her. He was Bluebeard, and yet she had felt just a half second of compassion for him.

  Worse, if that was the right word, she had agreed to come back. With paper on the crimes. She had agreed to see him again.

  And somehow, the very idea unnerved her.

  It’s just charm magic, she told herself. The most powerful charm magic she had ever seen. She hadn’t seen magic that strong in anyone’s aura in years. Charm magic… charmed. That was all.

  Next time, she would have her defenses up.

  Next time, she would be prepared.

  Next time, he wouldn’t affect her at all.

  Chapter 6

  Blue went back to the pool area and sank into one of the lounge chairs under the shade provided by a gigantic umbrella. His legs could barely hold him up. His heart was pounding.

  He had looked at her. He had broken every rule he had and he had looked at her, and God, she was beautiful, and he hadn’t expected it. He should have. He should have recognized her name. He had met her, for God’s sake, a number of times, she said, and he could almost remember it.

  Stumbling into those parties he always went to when he got beyond drunk and lonely for others of his kind, looking for the bar, scanning the room, gaze falling on the willowy woman with auburn hair, light coffee-colored skin, and stunning green eyes. High cheekbones, perfect lips, features that meant she should have been in a movie, but he hadn’t seen her in a movie, right?

  And at that party, he had forced himself to look away, berating himself, then he had gone around the room, past the overdressed, too-skinny things that passed for celebrities these days—how they winced at his appearance, his smell, and they were supposed to. Everyone was supposed to wince and stay away from him. People didn’t always stay away though, so he finally dyed his hair Smurf blue as a big neon warning sign.

  That usually worked.
>
  But on this day, in this place, he didn’t have his guard up. His guard was completely shut off here, no bright blue hair dye, no scraggly beard, and no Aqua Velva. It was a great babe-repulser, especially in large doses. The staff wouldn’t buy him any bottles of it; they had done so during his first tour here, and then made him shower after he dumped an entire bottle of the vile stuff all over himself.

  After that incident, they didn’t let him wear any cologne here, not even the expensive kind like Ralph Lauren’s Polo or something that someone else (not him) would think twice about dumping all over themselves. He just figured any artificial scent in sufficiently large doses kept people away from him, and usually it worked.

  They’d learned. Even his soap and shampoo was unscented. And early on in his rehab, they forced him to take showers. Now he took them voluntarily, sometimes two or three a day, depending on his workouts.

  He did have to admit that it was a joy just to be clean. And he thought he could indulge in that luxury here.

  He hadn’t expected a beautiful woman. He hadn’t expected to be alone with her. In the same room.

  Looking at her.

  How many times had he done that? Once? Twice? Three times?

  Too many, that was for sure.

  He had vowed he would never look at another woman again, because he didn’t want her in his mind. Not even slightly. Because his mind couldn’t be trusted. It would see a woman, fixate on her, and then take over, without leaving him any memory at all.

  It would force him to do horrible things, things he never ever wanted to do again.

  He looked at his hands. Still shaking. He was lying to himself, of course. Again. He was lying to himself again. Because he did have a memory of each one, his hands around her beautiful neck, the fear on her face, the blood. Oh dear God, the blood.

  That’s what he would remember.

  And the heads. In that room in his father’s castle—now his castle—now someone else’s castle, because he hadn’t been in it in quite literally centuries. All those beautiful women, women he had loved, or at least liked, women he had thought he had respected. Reduced to heads in a room, skin pale, eyes closed, their beauty intact.