Charming Blue

by Kristine Grayson

  “That’s because you’re one of the good guys,” Tank said. “You’ve probably never cursed someone in your entire life.”

  She was heavier than Jodi expected, and awkward as well. Jodi’s arm was feeling the strain of keeping her hand palm-side up so that Tank could continue to stand on it.

  “I have cursed a million people,” Jodi said, thinking that she was annoyed enough at Tank to curse at her right now. “But not with magic, no. Of course not. That way lies madness.”

  “Exactly,” Tank said. “And Blue might be a drunk, but he’s not insane.”

  Jodi almost disagreed automatically, and then she thought about it. That was true. Bluebeard had struck her as strange but rational. And if he had been placing curses on people, then he would be more than slightly crazy.

  Of course, no one put a curse on himself.

  “My presence activated the curse,” Jodi said thoughtfully. What had Bluebeard said to her that morning?

  Since the last death, I haven’t looked at a woman. I haven’t talked to a woman, except in passing, and I never ever touch one. I try to avoid people as much as possible. I’m afraid if I get to know a woman’s face, the image will get in my brain, and then… then it’ll start all over again.

  He had finished with a whisper as if it had all been too much to contemplate.

  He had looked at her, seen her, talked to her, and brushed against her. And then his image—his younger image, the image from the Kingdom, the image fifteen women had seen before their deaths—had shown up in her bedroom.

  “Holy crap,” Jodi said softly, letting her arm down.

  Tank slid, then threw herself flat against Jodi’s arm, grabbing onto her wrist. Tank swore in the old language. Her grip was surprisingly strong.

  “Sorry,” Jodi said and eased her to the top of the dresser near the door.

  “Holy crap what?” Tank asked as if she hadn’t panicked, as if she hadn’t swore. She brushed herself off. Her gauzy black dress was covered in fairy dust.

  “This poor man thinks he’s been killing women,” Jodi said, more to herself than Tank. “And he hasn’t harmed a soul.”

  “Finally! Someone who understands!” Tank said and clapped her little hands together, releasing more fairy dust sparkles.

  Jodi glared at Tank. “You knew this all along, and you let him suffer?”

  “No, I didn’t know it,” Tank said. “I suspected it, though. It was the only thing that made sense. I’ve been around evil. He’s not evil. He never has been.”

  Jodi had had that same sense. She had discounted it because of the charm. How many other people had done so?

  “He’s been punishing himself for no reason,” Jodi said, still thinking out loud.

  “Oh, there’s a reason,” Tank said. “Those women died.”

  Then she floated up just enough to get in Jodi’s face. Again. This time Jodi brushed her away.

  “That’s a bad habit,” Jodi snapped.

  “It gets your attention,” Tank said.

  “You already had my attention,” Jodi said.

  “Did not,” Tank said. “You were thinking out loud.”

  Jodi did not like how accurate Tank’s assessment was. “Fine. What do you want?”

  “Those women died,” Tank said, as if that was enough to get through to Jodi.

  “Yes, I know,” Jodi said. “And how does that affect me…?”

  Her breath caught. It affected her because of the curse. The curse had activated again. The women died because Bluebeard had noticed them. Then his curse turned on them, somehow killing them. Which was why he couldn’t remember killing them himself.

  “Oh, great,” Jodi said. “Now I’m a target.”

  “Yep,” Tank said. “There’s only one thing we can do.”

  “And what’s that?” Jodi asked.

  “Figure out how to lift the curse.”

  Chapter 14

  Lifting a curse wasn’t as easy as it sounded. Tank couldn’t just wave her tiny arms, say “Hocus Pocus!” and lift the curse. Nor could Jodi throw some comfort magic against it.

  Jodi and Tank had to figure out the nature of the curse, then they had to find the cursecaster. If the cursecaster was still alive, then he could lift the curse—or be forced to. (Jodi did not have offensive magic, so she wasn’t sure how you’d force anyone to do anything. She’d never forced someone to cast a spell in her life.)

  But if the cursecaster was dead—which this one might have been—then they had a whole other issue. Jodi wasn’t sure what they would do then.

  Jodi thought of all of that as she left Tank on the dresser. Jodi walked to the side of her bed, keeping an eye on the images of Bluebeard. The images were slowly fading, like a Polaroid development in reverse. They were getting muddier, and darker, and slowly dropping away.

  She turned on one of the lamps on the bedside table. A soft glow illuminated the room. She usually liked that softness. It eased her into relaxation; it eased her into sleep.

  But she didn’t feel like relaxing or like sleep.

  Still, she sat on the edge of the bed. “I didn’t see this curse in his aura. It was the proper blue for charm magic, and it had no other magic woven into it.”

  Tank flew from the bureau top to the bedside table. The light from the lamp fell across her as if it was her own private spotlight. She looked exhausted.

  Jodi had never seen Tank look exhausted before.

  She sat on the edge of the table, then rubbed her tiny hand over her face. After a moment, she said, “When did you check the aura?”

  Jodi frowned. She didn’t know why that was important. “The moment I met him. I was worried, Tank. You sent me to a guy I thought was a killer—”

  “Think about it,” Tank said. “You hadn’t reactivated the curse yet.”

  Jodi’s breath caught. She thought the encounter through, ran the memory through her brain. She had checked him the moment she walked through the door—after she could tear her gaze away from his stunning handsomeness.

  And she hadn’t glanced at his aura after he had looked at her. It took special vision, and she hadn’t used it again.

  “So the curse activates,” she said, “and he has no idea?”

  Tank shrugged. “Every curse is different.”

  “But he didn’t kill those women,” Jodi said. “The curse did.”

  “Something did,” Tank said.

  “And gave him a memory of it.”

  “But not a good one,” Tank said. “Just enough to convince him.”

  Jodi shuddered. This was one nasty curse. “Isn’t this complicated for a curse? I thought curses were simple.”

  Tank shrugged. “They can be extremely powerful, depending on who casts them. Experienced cursecasters can be very elaborate.”

  “Still,” Jodi said.

  Tank didn’t say any more. She leaned against the lamp, her wings wrapping around its base, almost as if she was using it to hold herself up.

  “It’s gotta be a curse,” Tank said. “What else would last that long without the person who cast it present?”

  Jodi didn’t know. There was so much about evil that she had never ever contemplated. She had no need to. Up until now, it really hadn’t been a part of her world.

  “I assume it would take time for the curse to play out against me,” Jodi said.

  “I don’t know the timetable,” Tank said. “We’re going to have to ask Blue.”

  Like they were asking him about the Fairy Tale Stalker. Jodi’s breath caught.

  “My God,” she said. “It’s happening again.”

  “Duh,” Tank said.

  “No, think, Tank. If this curse takes time to play out against the victims, if it happens event by event—first a visitation, then another, and finally the murder, all those women are still in danger. This new guy, this new Bluebeard, he saw them, he remembers them, and now they’re at risk from him. They’ve had the first vision. Some have even had the second. And—”

  �
�This thing will escalate. Crap,” Tank said. “How many times has this creepy cursecaster done this?”

  “And what does he get out of it?” Jodi said. “It would take a lot of magic to establish a curse like this one for so very long.”

  “It’s almost enough to send me to the Fates,” Tank said.

  Jodi looked up. The Fates were three women who governed the rules of magic. They were the final arbiters for the Powers That Be, who were in charge of all magic. But the Kingdoms rarely dealt with the Fates. Many of the Kingdom magical didn’t have enough power to even get themselves to the Fates unless there was an emergency, and the Kingdom folk had learned long ago that getting the Fates to solve a dispute might take centuries, at which point the dispute had faded into unimportance.

  “So go,” Jodi said. “They might know who is doing this.”

  “I’m sure they know,” Tank said. “But getting them to tell me is another matter. Have you ever talked to the Fates?”

  “No,” Jodi said.

  “More rules than a fairy tale princess,” Tank said. “And to say that they speak elliptically is an understatement. I’ve gone to them before, and their advice then boiled down to Solve it yourself.”

  “Greee-at,” Jodi said.

  “We’ll work on this one,” Tank said, “and if we need them, we’ll send Blue.”

  “Blue?” Jodi said.

  Tank shrugged. “I always look at it this way: let the person with the most at stake deal with those women.”

  “So you don’t have to.” Jodi smiled tiredly. She had that philosophy about her own business. “Has he gone to them before?”

  “Are you kidding?” Tank asked. “He thought he was a mass murderer. Do you think he’d go to the law?”

  “Good point,” Jodi said. Then she fell backward on the bed. “What’s going to make him believe us now?”

  “I don’t know,” Tank said. “But he’s got to. There are a lot of lives at stake.”

  Jodi propped herself up on her elbows so that she could see Tank. “Gee, Tank, you sound like you actually care.”

  “I’m not the heartless fairy,” Tank snapped. “Her name is spelled differently.”

  “What is this with you and Tink?” Jodi asked.

  “None of your damn business,” Tank said and flew away.

  Chapter 15

  Tank came back ten minutes later. By that time, Jodi had all the lights on and had changed into a pair of jeans and a white blouse. She was still barefoot, but she felt a bit more in control now.

  Except that she knew she couldn’t sleep.

  She went into her in-home office because she wasn’t comfortable anywhere else. She loved her kitchen, but there was no quick exit out of it. The dining room was too formal, and the front door in the living room made her nervous.

  The office, like her bedroom, opened onto the pool. In fact, when she bought the house, the office had been the master suite—not that 1920s houses had master suites. It had been the biggest bedroom, and it had had a small window that looked out over the pool. She had replaced the window with sliding glass doors so that she had a good view of the pool and the backyard.

  A soothing view—one that still managed to soothe.

  “There’s no one outside,” Tank said, as if that was news, as if she hadn’t left because Jodi pissed her off.

  Tank was sitting on the edge of Jodi’s desk. The desk here was glass with steel legs. Tank had walked across the glass to get to the edge, leaving tiny footprints on the polished surface.

  “It’s okay, Tank,” Jodi said tiredly. She was sitting in her desk chair, but she wasn’t getting any work done. She wasn’t even sure what work there was to do, which made her realize just how rattled she was. “You don’t have to stick with me. I’ll be fine.”

  “No, you won’t,” Tank said. “Right now, all we have to go on are those Fairy Tale Stalker reports and all the versions of the Bluebeard fairy tale. And while that doesn’t give us a lot, it does give us one thing: we know that these women were always alone when they were attacked.”

  “They were alone except for that image or projection or whatever that thing was in my bedroom.” Jodi shuddered. She was still creeped out by this. She wondered if she would always be.

  “Well, it depends on your definition of alone, doesn’t it?” Tank snapped. “I’m not even sure that thing is alive.”

  “But it can kill.”

  Tank made a loud exasperated noise. “We don’t know what kills the women. We just know that this thing—this image—is the first sign. And we know it shows up when women, the victims, are alone.”

  Jodi narrowed her eyes. She was not a victim. Or, at least she wasn’t going to be. Victims screamed and cried and ran helplessly through dark streets.

  She hadn’t screamed or cried, but she had run out of her bedroom, somewhat helplessly.

  She banished that thought from her brain. She had escaped, that was all.

  “My point,” Tank was saying, “was that these women were ripe for the pickings. Easy targets. Vulnerable.”

  She rolled the words through her mouth as if they were specially designed to irritate Jodi.

  “I’m not an easy target,” Jodi said.

  “I think anyone would be an easy target if they were alone,” Tank said.

  Jodi looked at her for a long moment. For once, Tank wasn’t trying annoy her. Tank was worried about her.

  “Thanks,” Jodi said. “I really appreciate it.”

  Tank nodded, then waved a hand. “Do whatever it is you do. I’ll keep an eye out.”

  And then she wove a circle of fairy dust around the room, slipped down onto one of the easy chairs, and fell sound asleep.

  Chapter 16

  They left the house a few hours later.

  Jodi called Ramon’s office line and got his voice mail. (She had a tiny hope that he would come in early, but this was really early.) She said that she had an unexpected meeting that morning, and he should reschedule everything she had for that day to later in the week. Then she drove to the rehab center with Tank so that they could arrive by the beginning of visitor’s hours.

  Jodi had called ahead, just to let Dr. Hargrove and Bluebeard know she was on her way. They were halfway there when she remembered the anti-Tank wards.

  Tank waved a hand, which was clearly her don’t-sweat-it gesture. “I’ll just wait for you outside.”

  And after Jodi parked, Tank sat on the dash as if the car had been designed for her. True to form, the guard didn’t even notice. He just gave Jodi her name badge as if they had become old friends and escorted her inside.

  Bluebeard was already in the meeting room. As she walked toward it, Jodi’s stomach did one lazy flip. Since Tank had accompanied her the entire way, Jodi hadn’t given these next moments any thought. For some reason, she thought Tank would have her back, and of course, Tank wasn’t even here.

  Jodi straightened, tugged her purse over her shoulder, and headed toward the room. Before she had left the house, she had taken a long, hot shower and changed into an all-black business suit. She found that clothes—particularly dress clothes—made her feel stronger. And she had a hunch that she would need to feel strong today. But she felt grimy just the same. Part of it was the exhaustion, which was stalking her like a tiny but relentless demon.

  She resisted the urge to touch her hair or check her makeup. This Bluebeard problem was a job she was doing for Tank—even though she wasn’t quite sure how or even if Tank would pay her.

  It was hard to keep her professional attitude, though. The bottom line was that someone had hated Bluebeard enough to put this horrible, horrible curse on him, and now somehow, she had been sucked into it as well.

  She pushed the door to the meeting room open and stopped, surprised to see him sitting down. His hair was wet, like he had just gotten out of the shower, and it dripped along the back of his white shirt. The shirt was untucked, and he wore a ripped pair of blue jeans. His feet were bare, and the room smelled
faintly of chlorine.

  “Hey,” he said, still not looking at her. Instead, he had the papers she had brought him spread out over the coffee table. They were in little bundles. “I thought you were going to call. I didn’t expect to see you here. When Dr. Hargrove told me you were coming, I was surprised.”

  She didn’t respond right away. Instead, she remained beside the door, purse in hand, and looked at his aura.

  It was blue, like it had been the day she met him, but the blue had faded. It was diluted with disorganized magic that snaked and sparked around the edges, almost like heat lightning in a clear sky.

  Unlike heat lightning, though, an amber light surrounded and contained his aura, puncturing it and damaging it.

  She wondered if he could feel the change.

  “Everything all right?” he asked, looking up. His gaze met hers so briefly that if she hadn’t been watching for it, she wouldn’t have noticed it.

  “Actually, no,” she said.

  He blinked, looked down, then moved his head to the other side, as if he didn’t quite know where to let his eyes settle.

  “It’s okay,” she said as she came farther into the room. “You can look at me.”

  “No, I explained—”

  “I know,” she said, “and you were right.”

  This time he did bring his head up, and on his face was an expression of such naked pain that it almost hurt to see it. “What happened?”

  She could hear the panic in his voice, so she smiled at him. This was what she did: she fixed distress.

  “Tank and I,” she said, “we figured out what’s going on.”

  “Oh,” he said and immediately looked away. He clearly thought she meant with the Fairy Tale Stalker.

  “With you,” she said.

  He frowned, then shook his head. “I’ve know that for centuries,” he said.

  “No, you haven’t,” she said. “What happened to you isn’t what you think. It’s a curse.”

  “No kidding,” he said.

  “A real curse,” she said. “And it’s destroyed countless lives. And now it’s starting again.”