Charming Blue

by Kristine Grayson

  “I wasn’t even in the Kingdoms when they arrived,” Blue said.

  Selda made a soft noise, as if that was a missing piece to a puzzle. Jodi didn’t pretend to understand. And honestly, she didn’t really care about the Brothers Grimm. She cared about the curse—all versions of it.

  “I know there are people who are good at curse removal,” Jodi said. “Do you know any we can contact?”

  “I know several,” Selda said. “Unfortunately, they’re all on other jobs. Rather big ones too.”

  “Since when is the death of a lot of women not big?” Jodi asked, a bit snidely. She knew that in the not-so-distant past the death of women was always considered no big deal.

  Another thought made her frown. That must have factored into Blue’s father’s decisions not to deal with his “murderer” son.

  “Those deaths are big,” Selda said. “It’s just—I can’t tell you what they’re working on, but trust me, if they solve those things, well, look at it this way. Remember the zero-year curse?”

  “No,” Jodi said.

  “Presidents elected in a year ending in zero died in office, until Ronald Reagan. Remember that?”

  “Vaguely,” Jodi said.

  “That’s one of ours. We solved it. We stopped the curse. It’s that kind of big.”

  “Of course, solving that one had all kinds of other unintended consequences,” Blue muttered.

  Jodi glanced at him, but Selda didn’t seem to notice. Jodi bit her lower lip, reminding herself—no politics. No religion. Not even Greater World politics and Greater World religion.

  “We could use some kind of support here,” Jodi said. “I mean, it’s just me and Tank and Blue, and we didn’t even know it was a curse until today.”

  “Tank did,” Blue said.

  “She wasn’t sure,” Jodi said. “The thing is, we don’t have the skill to combat this thing.”

  Selda frowned. “I’m not sure that’s true. I’ll see what I can find out. There are special rules for curses and long-lasting spells. I might even consult with the Fates.”

  “Better you than me,” Blue said.

  Both Selda and Jodi looked at him. He raised his head so that his gaze met theirs. He wasn’t trying to disappear now, but he wasn’t using the full force of his charm either.

  “You went to the Fates with this?” Selda asked.

  “Tank says you didn’t,” Jodi said.

  “Tank doesn’t know everything,” Blue said. “It was before I came to the Greater World. Centuries ago. I asked the Fates to help me stop. They said no.”

  Jodi let out a small breath. She had been hoping, deep down, that the Fates could be their ace in the hole, that with some manipulation—and yes, charm—the Fates would tell them how to get out of this mess.

  “Well, that makes sense in Fate-land,” Selda said, again with the bitterness.

  “It does?” Blue asked. There was a touch of color in his cheeks and an edge in his voice. Did Selda’s comment make him angry? Jodi hadn’t seen him angry. Despite everything, he hadn’t gotten mad—or at least not obviously mad. Which, she had to admit to herself, was a bit odd.

  If she found out she had been cursed for centuries and that curse had destroyed her life, she’d be furious.

  “You have to understand the Fates,” Selda said. “Or understand them as best as possible.”

  That flush in Blue’s cheeks had gotten deeper. Jodi didn’t want him angry at Selda. Clearly these two rubbed each other the wrong way. Jodi wanted him and Selda to work together.

  So Jodi stepped in. “Understand the Fates how?”

  “Blue went to the Fates and asked them to help him stop killing people, right?” Selda was looking at him. Jodi got the distinct impression that she was poking at him, that she was trying to make him angry. Jodi wasn’t sure why.

  “Yes,” Blue said tightly.

  “Well, you weren’t killing people,” Selda said. “So the Fates couldn’t help you.”

  “They could have told me what was going on,” Blue said. And now Jodi was certain. He was angry.

  Here was the fury that she had expected, and it worried her, because it was directed at Selda, whom they needed on their side.

  “Technically, no, they couldn’t,” Selda said. “They’re not supposed to interfere with our lives unless we do something terrible.”

  “Like curse someone for all eternity and cause the deaths of innocent people,” Blue snapped.

  His eyes were a dark, dangerous blue. Jodi put her hand on his arm. She wasn’t going to tell him to calm down, but she didn’t want an incident. Not here.

  “They can’t even intervene in that unless they’re asked to,” Selda said.

  “I asked them.” Blue had raised his voice. “I asked them for help.”

  Jodi had to use a bit of force to hold him in his chair. But oddly—or maybe not so oddly—she wasn’t afraid of his anger. If he was dangerous, she should have been afraid of him.

  But he wasn’t. He was just angry. Justifiably, understandably angry.

  “You asked them to help you stop killing people,” Selda said, and she had lowered her voice. Apparently she was starting to understand what was going on with him too. “They could only act on what you knew.”

  “That’s crap and you know it,” Blue said.

  Selda nodded. “Yeah, I know it’s crap. But it’s the Fates. That kind of crap is why Mellie and I started this place. We weren’t getting any help from the Powers That Be, except admonitions to leave the Greater World. We were told we didn’t belong here.”

  Blue was breathing hard. Jodi watched both of them. She hadn’t realized how much pain Selda felt. All those years of being accused of things she had never done.

  Like Blue.

  “Their rules are arcane,” Selda said so softly that Jodi had to strain to hear her. “They haven’t been updated in a millennia, and they really don’t apply to us anymore.”

  Blue shook his head. He looked down, his body trembling. Then he burst out of the chair with such power that the chair scuttered away. Jodi’s hand fell uselessly against the side of her chair, and Selda leaned back as if she expected Blue to attack her.

  But Blue didn’t head for the desk. Instead he paced around the gigantic room, as if he was filled with so much energy that he couldn’t contain it.

  “I can’t go back and undo the damage,” he said. “If I had known it was a curse, I could have stopped it. But I can’t reverse any of it.”

  Jodi glanced at Selda. She was watching him as if she had never seen any of it before. And she clearly wasn’t going to step in.

  “We have to stop it now,” Jodi said. “You and I, Blue, we know what’s going on. But those women in the Valley don’t know, and neither does the so-called Fairy Tale Stalker. We can put an end to it right now.”

  “If that woman”—and he pointed at Selda—“would get us some help. But your hands are tied too, aren’t they, Griselda? You can’t help us either because your people have something better to do.”

  “It’s not like that,” she said. “You can’t stop a magical intervention in the middle. Our anticurse specialists are already engaged. We have to wait weeks for them to free up. And from what you say, I’m not sure we have weeks.”

  “So what are we supposed to do?” he asked, approaching the chair, putting those big powerful hands on the back of it and sliding it back into place. He didn’t sit in it. Instead, he just stood there, tall and powerful, like the king he should have been. “Watch as this curse destroys other lives?”

  “I believe there are things that the cursed can do to stop their tormentor,” Selda said, “but again, I’m not an expert, so I’m going to have to look all this stuff up. While I do, see if you can find this so-called stalker. He would benefit in hearing from you.”

  “And what am I supposed to say?” Blue asked. “Look, kid, listen to us or you’re going to end up a broken wreck like me? With everyone you love dead and the world you know destroyed?”<
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  Jodi’s breath caught. Selda’s mouth thinned, and for a moment, Jodi thought Selda was going to yell back. Instead, she tilted her head, closed her eyes, and sighed.

  “I’m sorry,” she said after a moment, opening her eyes so that they met his. “I’m having trouble thinking of you in this new light.”

  “Yeah,” Blue said bitterly, “me too. I have trouble thinking of me that way too.”

  Chapter 31

  To everyone’s surprise, Selda offered Blue an apartment, but he turned her down. He didn’t want to be beholden to her, he said, but it was clear that he didn’t want the risk of another repeat of his bad behavior the last time she had given him an apartment. Apparently he didn’t trust himself either.

  But Jodi trusted him. And she found that odd, yet natural. It felt right.

  Which was why, as they left the Archetype Place, she offered him a place to stay. Not with her, much as she wanted to. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him or she hadn’t known him long, although those were good enough excuses. She had just learned long ago, after some bad relationships, that she didn’t share her home with anyone for any reason.

  No. The place to stay that she had offered him was one of the apartments that she usually put some of her clients in.

  Blue shook his head. They were walking back to the car. “I’ll just go to a hotel.”

  But he said that in a way that made her wonder if he was going to find a place to rest his head at all.

  “I have furnished units,” Jodi said. “I use them for folk who work for me. It’ll give you a quiet place to think.”

  He gave her a sideways glance. “I’m not sure I want to think. And I certainly don’t want charity. I can afford a hotel room.”

  “Good,” Jodi said. “Then you can afford that apartment.”

  Her car was still the only one in the parking lot. She opened the door, and purple air floated out. Apparently Tank was still inside.

  Jodi left the door open to air out the car.

  “Besides,” she said to Blue, “your neighbors will be from the Kingdoms and will be able to help if you need it.”

  His lips turned up in a half smile. “No one’ll help me. No one will even talk to me. It would be better if my neighbors weren’t from the Kingdoms.”

  She let out a small laugh. Selda and Blue were having trouble forgetting his old identity and believing the new one. Jodi had already moved past that old identity, so far past it, in fact, that she hadn’t thought about it when she made the offer.

  She leaned on the car door and peered at him. Tall, well-dressed, unbelievably handsome. So handsome her eyes almost hurt when contemplating him, even with his black hair mussed and a bit of a sunburn along his nose, probably from the ride into Century City.

  “If you don’t tell anyone who you are,” she said, “I doubt anyone will recognize you. Not unless they’ve been around a long time, and most of the folks in the apartments haven’t been here for a long time. Maybe you should use the name you used in the rehab center.”

  “John Franklin?” He sighed. “Won’t everyone wonder why I’m in your little Kingdom housing project then?”

  Little Kingdom housing project stung just a bit, as if he dismissed what she did. To be fair, however, she hadn’t really told him what she did, not in depth. And he might have been trying to push back. He still seemed off-balance from his discussion with Selda.

  “No,” Jodi said. “Not everyone from the Kingdoms is famous. You never heard of me until a few days ago, right?”

  “For all I know, you’re the sorcerer’s apprentice,” he said with just a bit of a smile, “and Disney got it wrong casting Mickey Mouse. It wouldn’t be so far-fetched, considering how much Disney gets wrong.”

  Jodi laughed for real this time. “I’m no one’s apprentice, and no one has ever written a fairy tale about me. And I’m pretty common. Most of us who came here from the Kingdoms are people no one has ever heard of. Some of us like it like that, and everyone else wants to be famous in one way or another.”

  “So they end up in LA,” he said.

  She nodded. “So they end up in LA. But I think my little Kingdom housing project, as you called it, is perfect for you. If something goes wrong, that something will be magical, and we won’t have to explain ourselves to mortal authorities.”

  He grunted. “I hadn’t thought of it like that.”

  He walked around the car and opened the passenger door. More purple air wafted out. Tank really overate.

  “I’m still going to pay you,” Blue said.

  “Notice I haven’t argued with that,” Jodi said. Then she slipped inside the car. Tank hadn’t moved. She was surrounded by a small bubble, with clear air inside.

  So she had awakened herself at one point, then put herself in a little protective shell, and had gone back to sleep.

  Jodi had had enough. There was a thin purple haze inside the car.

  “Tank,” she said, “go get yourself the magical equivalent of an antacid, will you?”

  Tank blinked, then sat up, piercing the bubble. She made a face at the purple air and said, “Caviar. Does it every time.”

  Then she flew out of the car on a somewhat wobbly path, still under the influence of whatever else it was she had gorged on.

  Jodi waited until Tank took the back entrance into the Archetype Place, then put the top down.

  “C’mon in,” she said to Blue. “Let’s take you to your new home.”

  Chapter 32

  Blue’s new home was a small bungalow in what had once been a roadside motel. Someone had remodeled the entire motel complex creatively, combining rooms, adding windows and a lot of greenery, but it was hard to hide the footprint of that 1940s complex. Blue remembered when those motels were new and fashionable, long before the interstate highway system. The motels were romantic, like the open road itself, an upscale place to lay your head after a long day driving America’s back roads, looking for adventure.

  Of course, he hadn’t stayed in a place like that until the 1970s, when the motels had gone to seed, and most of them rented by the hour.

  This one still had its original kidney-shaped pool, kept up with sparkling water and little blue dolphins painted along the bottom. The original office remained as well, only now it was the stand-alone manager’s apartment, a little house complete with swing set in the backyard.

  Jodi knew everyone here and greeted them all by name. The moment he came in here, he knew why she wanted him here. She wanted him here because any problems he caused—magical problems—would seem normal. This was like a bit of the Kingdoms in Los Angeles.

  In addition to the selkie swimming in the pool, there were mermaids lounging in the deep end and water sprites playing tag along the surface. Dwarves pretended to be lawn gnomes when the car pulled in. It wasn’t until Jodi got out that they actually moved.

  In fact, Blue realized more than half the lawn decorations, from the tiny leprechauns to the fauns to the crouching lion in the back, weren’t statues at all, but living, breathing creatures.

  His room was next to that of a troll named Gunther, a big glowery creature that smelled faintly of molten iron and stagnant water. Jodi asked Gunther to keep an eye on Blue—whom she remembered to call John—and Gunther had accepted the assignment as if Jodi had told him that he was guarding the president of the United States.

  Gunther had looked at Jodi with that melty look Blue recognized. The troll was smitten. And Blue didn’t like that.

  Jodi deserved better. Not that Blue was going to get a say in anything. He wouldn’t. Jodi was her own woman, and besides, he was damaged goods.

  (And “damaged goods” was such an understatement.)

  Besides, while she was friendly with Gunther, she didn’t give Gunther a melty look. Still, she touched him casually too.

  Apparently she touched everyone.

  Blue tried not to feel disappointed about that.

  She left him and his leather bag outside number forty-two, a p
ale blue bungalow with white lattice work covered in fragrant peach-colored blossoms. It was pretty, and it made him nervous.

  So nervous that when she told him she wouldn’t see him until the following day, he asked her where she was going.

  He had sounded like a needy kid.

  Maybe he was needy. And maybe Jodi had heard that, because she looked at him oddly.

  “I have a job, you know,” she had said. “I haven’t done any work all day. I doubt Tank will pay me for this one with you, even though she said she was hiring me. Tank has weird ideas about what constitutes payment.”

  He had smiled and nodded, as if he understood, and to be fair, he did understand. He was just a job to Jodi. A job she was doing reluctantly for someone she didn’t quite trust.

  Nothing more.

  She hadn’t even waited until he went into the apartment. He had unlocked the door to his new home, and she had taken off for her car.

  Apparently, she couldn’t wait to get rid of him.

  Not that he blamed her. He was beyond damaged goods. He was a man who had spent centuries believing the worst of himself and destroying himself to make sure that he wouldn’t behave badly again.

  Such euphemisms he had learned to use. “Behave badly.” “Damaged goods.” He had done his best to destroy himself so that he wouldn’t kill anyone, because he believed himself capable of it, and not just that, but doing horrible things to the bodies.

  He had believed the worst of himself, and then when he had found out that he was under the influence of a curse, he fled from the place that had provided him a modicum of comfort, a bit of help.

  Of course, it had been the wrong kind of help, the wrong kind of comfort, given who he thought he was. He was a man who had made terrible, terrible mistakes, even when looked at through the prism of the curse. He hadn’t defended himself. He had let himself sink into the morass that his life had become, and then he hadn’t even done the honorable thing and ended it all.

  Because if he truly believed he could hurt people like that, he should have prevented it by ending himself.

  He had known that for a long time, and even tried to act upon it a few times, but something had stopped him.