Charming Blue

by Kristine Grayson

  “You read the Greater World story?” Tank said as if Jodi had grown fangs.

  “I read all of them, Tank. I like to know what’s being said about us.”

  The door opened, and Tank dove into Jodi’s purse. The purse rattled, and from its depths, Jodi heard a faint “Ow.”

  She tried not to smile.

  Then she looked at the door. Blue came in, his hair wet again—he must have showered—and this time he was wearing a light blue shirt and khaki pants. He wore sandals. The entire outfit looked comfortable and suited him.

  He gave her a tentative smile. “Dr. Hargrove thinks you’re good for me. He says I would never have noticed the spiderwebs if it weren’t for you.”

  “He’s right,” she said with a smile. “About the spiderwebs, that is.”

  “The rest of it too,” Blue said. “If you’re right, I mean, and this is a curse. If it is a curse, then it’s really old.”

  “Do you have any idea who could have cast it?” Jodi asked.

  He shook his head. “I killed a lot of brain cells. I don’t remember as much as I probably should.”

  He sat back down into his old spot on the couch. Then he moved the papers around. “I’m still not sure I believe you. But—”

  “Oh, believe her.” Tank’s head appeared over the edge of the purse.

  “The staff can see you,” Jodi said.

  “They’re not going to be looking at your purse,” Tank said. “Besides, I can make it invisible.”

  “Then they’ll wonder what happened to it,” Jodi said.

  “Just don’t move much,” Blue said to Tank. “They’re going to be watching me anyway.”

  He was looking down at the papers, shuffling them back and forth. He smiled, though, and added quietly, “It’s good to see you, Tank.”

  “It’s good to see you too,” Tank said. “You look better when you’re sober. Smell better too.”

  “Thank you, I think,” he said. Then his smile faded. “Is what Jodi says true? Is this a curse?”

  “Yep,” Tank said, “and you seem to be sharing it with this unfortunate bastard.”

  She waved a tiny hand at the papers on the table, and the purse rocked.

  “Tank,” Jodi said, trying hard not to look directly at the purse. “Don’t move at all.”

  “Spoilsport,” Tank said.

  “The curse has started again, though, right? I mean, if that’s the right language. It always happens, but sometimes it gets worse, right?” Blue said, as if Jodi and Tank hadn’t spoken. “It’s ensnared Jodi and she’s in danger from me. I mean, that’s what we know, right?”

  “She’s not in danger from you, Blue,” Tank said. “She’s in danger from the magic. And she’s not ensnared. She’s a target. The one ensnared is you.”

  He sighed, then shook his head. “That can’t be possible. I remember killing. I remember…”

  His voice trailed off, but he raised his hands as if they were still stained with blood.

  Jodi’s heart started to pound. The way she understood curses, they couldn’t force someone to do something he wasn’t inclined to do in the first place. Of course, technically, he didn’t do anything. An illusion of him did.

  But she didn’t know this man, and she didn’t know what he was inclined to do. She only knew what his magic said he could do—magically. And that was charm. But if there was a violence already in him…

  “You remember what, exactly?” Tank asked.

  “Not a lot,” he said. “Images. My hands—”

  “Strangling those women?” Tank asked. “Cutting off their heads? Putting their heads on a pike? Ever wonder why those heads never decayed?”

  “By the Powers, Tank, no, God, stop,” he said.

  “Not beheading them?”

  “I blocked it,” he said.

  “There would’ve been a lot of blood,” Tank said with a little too much relish. She was making Jodi nervous. More nervous, if that was possible. And Jodi was trying to concentrate on Blue. “Do you remember being covered with a lot of blood?”

  “Tank,” Blue said, and he sounded distressed.

  “Or what you did with the bodies? Did you chop them up?”

  “Tank!” he said. “Stop.”

  “You’re awfully squeamish for a mass murderer,” Tank said.

  Tank was right. He was squeamish. And Jodi found that interesting.

  “Those heads belonged to women I cared about,” Blue said primly. He was still looking down at the papers. It was almost as if he had reverted from the man Jodi had spoken to this morning to the man she had met two days before.

  But his comment about the women didn’t sound like a bid for sympathy to Jodi. It sounded honest. And if she wasn’t so sure of what she saw in his aura, she would be wondering how deep his ability to charm went.

  “You didn’t answer me,” Tank said softly to Blue.

  “I did too,” Blue said. “I told you I blocked the killings.”

  “You said you blocked the beheading,” Tank said. “But that other stuff, that would be hard to block. Besides, there would’ve been a murder room somewhere close to you. Did you have one? It would have been—”

  “Tank, really,” he said and stood up. He moved to his position behind the couch again. “I can’t listen to this. I did it, okay? The curse forced me to. And then I blocked it.”

  “Or you never did it in the first place,” Jodi said. She leaned back in her chair. She was calming down again. Tank had asked a lot of logical, if gruesome, questions. And while Blue’s reaction to them seemed convincing enough, there was something else that bothered Jodi.

  Blue had his head down. He had the couch between him and Tank or him and Jodi or him and both of the women, depending on how paranoid Jodi wanted to be. He was digging his fingers into the back of the couch again.

  “I did it,” he said. “I remember it.”

  “You remember an image,” Tank said with sarcasm that only Tank could wield.

  “It’s vivid,” he said. “I know what it’s like to have a patch-hole memory. When I drink—”

  “Were you drinking then?” Tank asked.

  “Of course I drank,” Blue said. “Everybody drank.”

  “To excess?” Tank asked. She climbed to the edge of the purse.

  “Get back down,” Jodi said to Tank.

  Tank ducked down just a little. “This is impossible,” she muttered.

  Jodi ignored that. Instead, she said, “You’re both missing one important piece. Why didn’t anyone question the survivability of those heads? Blue, you don’t have the kind of magic that would keep them fresh. Someone kept them fresh and visible. That’s a spell. That’s something separate.”

  He winced, then raised his head just enough so that he could see her.

  “Did anyone check to see where that spell had come from?” Jodi asked.

  “I don’t know,” he whispered.

  “The fairy tale says the heads were in your castle. Is that true?”

  “Yes, it’s true,” he said. “But only I could see them.”

  “Oh,” Jodi said. Which made the fresh heads part of the curse, not a spell. That curse was powerful; it made Blue see all kinds of things that never happened.

  “And you told people about seeing the heads?” Tank flew out of the purse and hovered in front of Blue. “Blue, that’s just plain dumb.”

  “No,” he said, still looking at Jodi. “I didn’t tell anyone. Whenever any woman I was interested in came into the castle, she saw them too.”

  Tank cursed, then did a backflip and flew upside down around the room for a few minutes, as if what she heard infuriated her.

  “And no one tried to find out where the heads came from?” Jodi asked.

  He hadn’t looked away from her at all. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. They thought I did it.”

  “But you don’t have the magic to keep the heads fresh. So they would have had to know someone had cast a spell on the heads,” Jodi said.
>
  “It was a curse,” Tank said.

  “But they didn’t know that, and the heads were fresh,” Jodi said. “Someone had to wonder about that. If I were chatelaine, I would have wondered how those heads kept appearing in the castle I was responsible for. And I would have wondered why the damn things didn’t decay.”

  “I have no idea,” Blue said. “Everyone was so shocked that I murdered women that I don’t think anyone thought about it. It’s all confused. No one talked to me. I was the villain, remember? Plus, my dad ruled the Kingdom, so he could—and did—decline to prosecute me. I could have run amok forever. As it was, I ran amok for years before I decided I couldn’t take it anymore. Not that it mattered. No one sent their daughters to the castle.”

  “And no one else saw the heads?” Jodi asked again.

  “I thought they did, but I don’t know. Half a dozen women ran screaming from that place. I don’t blame them.”

  Jodi didn’t either. She wouldn’t have gone up there in the first place, had she known what he had done.

  Although that was a silly thought, considering she had come here at Tank’s request, knowing exactly who Blue was.

  Or who everyone thought he was.

  “Didn’t your castle have a chatelaine?” Jodi asked.

  Blue frowned, clearly trying to remember. “Sure. She, she had been there for a while. She didn’t like children—”

  “What does that mean?” Jodi asked. It was her experience—hell, it was her training—that chatelaines had to make life comfortable for everyone in the castle.

  “She said children were better seen, not heard. You know, that old thing. And she wouldn’t deal with the children’s areas. She brought in someone else for that. My mother wanted to get rid of her, but my father wouldn’t.”

  “Why?” Jodi asked. “It sounds like she couldn’t do her job.”

  Blue shrugged. “It’s a very long time ago.”

  “An important long time,” Jodi said. “She should have found the magic around you. She should have cleared those awful images of the heads. And she should never have passed off any of her duties overseeing any part of the house.”

  Tank dove into the purse again, and puffs of fairy dust rose around it like talcum powder. This time there was no “ow.” Then she popped her head out of the purse.

  “You think she’s the one who cursed him?” Tank asked.

  “I don’t know,” Jodi said. “The timeline doesn’t fit. She’d been around him since he was a child.”

  “Curses are more powerful when they grow from childhood,” Tank said.

  Both Jodi and Blue looked down at the purse. Tank shrugged, raised her tiny hands, and said, “Just sayin’,” like the goth teen she was dressed as.

  “Why would she do that?” Blue asked. He was looking at Jodi and for a minute, she thought he meant Tank. Then she realized he meant the chatelaine.

  “Curse you from childhood?” Jodi frowned. “That’s not how we’re trained. Chatelaines are trained in good magic. We don’t touch dark magic. We shouldn’t, anyway.”

  “Why didn’t your dad fire her?” Tank asked.

  “I don’t know, Tank,” Blue said. He was sounding tired. “It was a long time ago.”

  “I think it’s important, Blue,” Tank said.

  “It’s all important,” Jodi said. She peered down at the table. Blue’s memories were important and those printouts were important. Something was very wrong. Something had been very wrong for a very long time.

  “My father left the household to my mother,” Blue said softly. He had a faraway look in his eyes. “She—she was shy. She hated dealing with people. It was almost as if they frightened her.”

  “So she didn’t deal with the chatelaine,” Tank said. “Even though the woman didn’t do her job.”

  “What kind of magic did your mother have?” Jodi asked.

  “I don’t know.” Blue brought a hand to his face. “I honestly don’t remember. I worked so hard at putting all of this out of my mind. I have no idea.”

  His voice was shaking. He sounded fragile.

  Tank said, “Well, Blue, you gotta remember—”

  “Shush, Tank,” Jodi said. “We’re overwhelming him.”

  At that moment, the door opened again. Dr. Hargrove came inside the room. “I think this has gone on long enough,” he said. “Clearly Blue is tired.”

  “I’m fine,” Blue said curtly.

  Hargrove came deeper into the room. He glanced at Jodi’s purse, and she cursed silently.

  “What’s in there?” he asked.

  Tank dove deeply into the purse.

  “My dog,” Jodi said. “She’s a miniature Chihuahua.”

  “Hey!” Tank said from inside the purse.

  Hargrove looked over his shoulder, as if he had heard that but thought it came from outside the room. Both Jodi and Blue were careful not to react.

  Then Hargrove glanced at the purse again. “They call those pocket dogs, right?”

  “Yes,” Jodi said.

  “You do realize pets aren’t allowed here.”

  “She never leaves the purse,” Jodi said with emphasis.

  Hargrove nodded, then frowned. “Still, you should have told us.”

  “Sorry,” Jodi said. “Next time.”

  “Doctor Hargrove.” Blue spoke, his voice deep and assured. He startled Jodi, and Hargrove looked at him like he hadn’t expected Blue to talk at all.

  “Yes, Blue?” Hargrove had a tone of voice that he seemed to use with patients. Jodi hadn’t noticed it until now. It was… not quite patronizing, but just a fraction off. You had to listen to hear it, but this time Jodi heard it.

  “Ms. Walters has brought me bad news,” Blue said. He was using that strange deep confident voice again. “It’s something I’m going to have to take care of.”

  “What is going on, Ms. Walters?” Hargrove asked. He stopped in front of her, looming over her. She hated it when people did that.

  “It’s confidential, Dr. Hargrove,” Jodi said. “I’m sure you can understand that.”

  “Let’s talk to me, Dr. Hargrove,” Blue said, and Jodi had to suppress a smile. Blue managed to replicate Dr. Hargrove’s almost-patronizing tone exactly.

  Hargrove looked at Blue in surprise. Had Blue never spoken to him like that before?

  “Forgive me, Blue,” he said, and now his tone was patronizing. “It’s just that—”

  “Here’s what’s going on, Dr. Hargrove,” Blue began. He looked taller. Suddenly he looked powerful. Not dangerously powerful, but like a man who was groomed to rule a kingdom. A man who knew that he controlled his small patch of the world, and no one could shake him from that.

  Tank poked her head out of the purse and folded her arms on the edge, resting her chin on her wrists. She had a Kleenex over her head. Someone could see that she was a live creature but not really tell what kind unless she made some kind of move.

  Jodi hoped Tank wouldn’t make a move.

  Blue continued, “I need to finish my discussion with Ms. Walters. It’s important. I prepared all day yesterday and most of last night for it.”

  “Yes,” Hargrove said in that same patronizing tone. “We discussed it already, and how important sleep is to your healing. This is not acceptable—”

  “And when I am done talking with Ms. Walters,” Blue said as if Hargrove hadn’t spoken at all, “I will talk with you about my treatment. But not until then. Is that clear?”

  “Right now, Mr. Franklin, you are in no position to give orders,” Hargrove said.

  “All right then,” Blue said. “Let’s put me in a position to do so.”

  He turned slightly and bowed just a little to Jodi. The courtly manners suited him. She felt a smile starting in spite of herself.

  “Excuse me for a moment, ladies,” he said. “I’ll be back. I’m going to talk with Dr. Hargrove.”

  Jodi didn’t quite wince when Blue said “ladies,” but she wanted to. And of course, Hargrove caught it
.

  “Ladies?” he said. “See, this is why I believe you need to take better care of yourself, Blue. There’s only one woman here—”

  “Ladies,” Blue said firmly. “Ms. Walters’s pocket dog, Tank, is female as well. I’m quite fond of her.”

  Tank growled from Jodi’s purse. Jodi wanted to hit the purse to silence Tank, but she was afraid of knocking the Kleenex off her head.

  Hargrove narrowed his gaze. “Something’s not right here.”

  “Yes, I know,” Blue said. “Let’s go outside.”

  Hargrove glanced at Jodi as if he expected her help. “But—”

  “No buts,” Blue said. “Let’s go.”

  He crossed around from the back of the couch and headed toward Hargrove. For the first time, Jodi realized how much bigger Blue was than the doctor. It seemed like Hargrove just realized it as well. Panic crossed his face and then disappeared as if it never was.

  Suddenly Hargrove was afraid of Blue. Or had he always been afraid of Blue? Jodi didn’t know. And she wanted to find out, but she didn’t know how to ask.

  Blue put his hand on Hargrove’s shoulder and propelled him from the room.

  Jodi let out a small sigh. Tank pulled the Kleenex off her head.

  “That was weird,” Tank said as she crawled out of the purse. “Did Blue really just call me a bitch?”

  Chapter 21

  The moment they stepped out of the meeting room, Blue took his hand off Dr. Hargrove’s shoulder. Blue had started shaking; he didn’t want Dr. Hargrove to feel that.

  Everything that Jodi had told Blue, everything that Tank had confirmed, made him queasy. Maybe he should have felt joyful—they were telling him that none of this was his fault—but he had lived with the image of himself as some kind of horrible involuntary killer for so long that he didn’t trust this transformation now.

  When he was young, he had thought himself invulnerable. He had planned to be a better ruler than his father, who wasn’t a bad man, just a bit oblivious at times. His father had used that obliviousness to his own advantage when Blue got accused of killing young women. His father pretended the news wasn’t relevant at all, which had disturbed Blue.

  Blue started traveling when he realized how bad it could get. He grew a beard so he wouldn’t be recognized, but that didn’t work. He was well known as the Prince Charming whose family called him “Blue” because of the highlights in his hair. Those highlights dominated his beard. He couldn’t hide. But when he got recognized, people weren’t willing to call him Prince. They called him Bluebeard.