Charming Blue

by Kristine Grayson

  It surprised him that the motley little group had returned to the complex. He wondered when they had done that. He wondered if they had waited for him at Jodi’s house.

  “I should have told them I was leaving,” Blue said.

  Jodi smiled at him. “I took care of it,” she said.

  She gave him the pizzas and the bags from the deli. She carried her clothing bags, looking lost beneath the piles of stuff.

  Somehow she had managed to drive all over one section of Los Angeles, get food, get clothing, and get takeout all in the space of an hour. That had to have something to do with her magic, because he didn’t believe it possible without magic.

  Even though she had keys, she let him flounder for his in front of the apartment. He set the food bags down, adjusted the pizza boxes, and reached into his pocket—as the door opened.

  He let out a yelp. A young man with black curls stood there. He wore a shiny silver suit and, unless Blue missed his guess, eyeliner. (What did they call that? Guyliner? Blue had never ever seen it before. At least not up close. It was hard to avoid such things in LA, after all.)

  “Who the hell are you?” Blue snapped, not sounding as fierce as he wanted to. At least he hadn’t tossed the pizza boxes into the air in surprise. He probably should set them down, however.

  Although, the man with the guyliner didn’t look that threatening. In fact, Blue had a hunch he could take the guy with a single shove backward.

  “I could ask the same of you, except that I know who you are,” the man said. “You’re our new tenant, Mr. Franklin.”

  Then, as Blue was processing “our new tenant,” trying to figure out if this guy was part of the rental staff, and if Blue had actually met him and didn’t remember (how could he forget someone like this?), the guy looked over Blue’s shoulder at Jodi and mouthed Pretty.

  Blue frowned. What the hell?

  Jodi laughed, which surprised Blue, and said, “Stop it, Ramon. Help us with these packages, would you?”

  Ramon? The Ramon of the organized papers and the purple pen? Somehow that made sense.

  Ramon took the bags off the stoop and carried them into the kitchen, putting everything away without being asked.

  Blue set the pizza boxes down on the kitchen table, and immediately Ramon moved them to the kitchen counter, taking down plates (who ate pizza with plates?) and pulling out a bottled water.

  Jodi brought her own shopping bags inside and carried them into the bedroom, without asking, making Blue’s stomach clench. He hadn’t figured on her sleeping in there. In fact, he hadn’t thought of the sleeping arrangements at all. The couch didn’t look long enough for him.

  “I see you brought some clothes,” Jodi said, and Blue’s frown deepened. Of course he had. She had seen his leather bag. He’d dutifully hung up his belongings at the beginning of his long afternoon, and that had taken all of five minutes.

  “I figured you’d need something to wear since they’ve closed you out of the house,” Ramon said from the kitchen. “I didn’t expect you to clean out Rodeo Drive.”

  Jodi laughed. “I didn’t go to Rodeo.”

  Blue let out a small sigh. Jodi had been talking to Ramon, not to Blue. She had used that same familiar tone she used with him. So this was how she treated her friends. Then Blue shook his head slightly. He didn’t consider himself a friend.

  How she treated people she liked, then. That was how she treated people she liked. And even that thought boggled his mind.

  Ramon came into the living room, handed Blue a cold bottle of water, and kept one for himself. Blue felt overrun, and self-conscious, and nervous.

  What was he supposed to do? He actually had to fall back on advice from Dr. Hargrove. When in doubt, remember your manners.

  “I’m sorry,” Blue said, extending his right hand. “We haven’t been formally introduced. I’m John Franklin, but my friends call me Blue.”

  Ramon took his hand and didn’t shake it. Instead he held it lightly, his eyes twinkling. “I can see why they call you Blue. Those eyes of yours are something. Aren’t they something, Jodi?”

  “He’s not your type, Ramon,” Jodi said from the bedroom.

  “Why don’t you let him tell me that,” Ramon said. Then, softer to Blue, “Please don’t tell me that.”

  No one had flirted this outrageously with Blue in years.

  “Sorry,” Blue said again, glancing at the bedroom, not sure why he was continually apologizing to this man. “I’m afraid that’s true.”

  “Ah,” Ramon said like a man used to rejection. Then he turned his head, looked at Blue out of the corner of his eye, and dramatically turned his head toward the bedroom. His lips pursed just a little, and he said, “Oh. Really?”

  Blue blushed. He hadn’t blushed in years. He couldn’t remember the last time. He hadn’t meant to reveal his interest in Jodi. He didn’t have a right to be interested in Jodi. He didn’t have a right to be interested in anyone.

  Ramon looked pointedly at the bedroom again, then leaned toward Blue. Ramon still hadn’t let go of Blue’s hand.

  “Our Jodes,” Ramon said in a tone so soft that Jodi couldn’t hear, “is terribly picky. So if she gives you trouble, you tell her to talk to me. I won’t change her mind, but I will step in on any missed date. I don’t mind expensive food and a chance to dress up.”

  Blue laughed in spite of himself. Ramon patted their clenched hands with his free hand, then let go.

  “Seriously,” Ramon said, losing the air of flirtatiousness. “I’m a matchmaker from way back and a firm believer in true love. If you’re right for Jodi, I’ll do everything in my power to make sure the magic happens.”

  Blue clutched the cool bottle of water like a lifeline. This conversation made no sense to him. He didn’t know what, if anything, led Ramon to that true love assumption. Maybe it was just Ramon’s own attraction to Blue. Maybe it was the way Ramon always spoke to the men in Jodi’s life.

  “What are you doing?” Jodi said as she came out of the bedroom. She had changed into a pair of jeans and a light green top. Her feet were bare again, but her toenails were painted a glittery silver. She looked better than she had all day.

  “I’m telling Blue how available you are,” Ramon said.

  Jodi rolled her eyes. “Ramon believes that I should find a nice man and settle down. Maybe then I won’t work him as hard.”

  “I do not,” Ramon said. “I don’t like how lonely you are, that’s all. And you shouldn’t let this man go. He’s a Greek god.”

  “Actually, I’m not,” Blue said with more seriousness than he had planned.

  “Oh, that’s right,” Ramon said, waving a hand. “I would see sparkles of weird magic if you were. Although I am seeing magic sparkles, aren’t I, Jodi?”

  Blue swallowed hard. He had no sense that Ramon was one of the magical, so this conversation had taken an even odder turn.

  “You are,” Jodi said. “Blue has charm magic, which is why you think he’s perfect for me.”

  “Ooooh,” Ramon said, raising his eyebrows in mock surprise. “You’re one of the Prince Charmings. How marvelous. I’ve met Cinderella’s, you know. He has a bookstore in Westwood.”

  “I know,” Blue said, not willing to say any more.

  “So,” Ramon said, “which one are you?”

  Blue gave him a tight smile, hoping the man wouldn’t push anymore. “I’m one of the insignificant ones.”

  “Really?” Ramon said. “There are insignificant Prince Charmings?”

  “Ramon,” Jodi said, sliding her arm through his, much as she had done with Blue earlier. “I appreciate the clothes, but what are you doing here, besides mooching our pizza?”

  “To mooch, my friend, means we must eat.” Ramon put a hand over hers and walked into the kitchen. Blue followed, feeling like the odd man out. “So you get the food, and I will tell you all of my little secrets.”

  “Not all,” Jodi said as she sat at the table. “Please.”

  Blue
sat across from her, and Ramon put pizza slices on plates in front of them, along with some silverware. Even though Blue was trying his best to be polite, he had never in his life eaten pizza with silverware.

  He put his water down and stared at the pizza. He had been hungry. Now that hunger was a distant memory.

  “I,” Ramon said with emphasis, as he sat with his own piece of pizza at the head of the table, “have all kinds of news.”

  “I hope it’s important,” Jodi said. “It’s already been a very long day.”

  And a confusing one. Blue had had no idea, when he woke up the day before, that he would end up here on this night. It almost made him nervous to go to sleep later—that is, if he and Jodi could work out the issues with the bed.

  And he blushed again.

  Fortunately, no one was looking at him.

  “Of course it’s important,” Ramon said. “Do you think I’d crash your little love nest if it wasn’t important?”

  “Ramon,” Jodi said tiredly.

  “Yes, well,” Ramon said, sliding his plate around. “I do hope you’re still interested in our friend the Fairy Tale Stalker.”

  Suddenly Blue snapped awake. So did Jodi. They both stared at Ramon.

  “What about him?” Jodi asked.

  “I think I know where to find him,” Ramon said. “And I did it all without any hocus-pocus. Are you proud of me?”

  Chapter 39

  “Proud of you?” Jodi exclaimed. “My God, Ramon, I could kiss you.”

  Blue profoundly hoped that she wouldn’t. He still hadn’t completely figured out exactly what her relationship with Ramon was, or who this Ramon really was, or even if he had magic. (It didn’t seem like he had magic.)

  “No need to make the handsome Blue jealous,” Ramon said, his eyes twinkling. Blue started. It unnerved him how clearly this man saw him.

  “Ramon, you’re teasing,” Jodi said, setting her plate aside and leaning toward him. “Tell us what’s going on.”

  “Only if you eat,” Ramon said. “Good pizza going cold.”

  Jodi rolled her eyes at him again, then picked up her plate and moved it back in front of her. Blue took a dutiful bite of the pizza, and the burst of tomato, spices, and garlic brought his hunger back. He glanced at Ramon and found himself wondering who really had the domestic/fixer magic, Ramon or Jodi.

  Jodi took a very obvious bite of pizza. Ramon nodded, as if he approved, then he said, “You had me look up all of this information on the Fairy Tale Stalker, I assume for Mr. Blue here, because if he’s like you, then technology is not his friend.”

  Blue smiled, just a little. Ramon smiled back. So apparently Ramon was the assistant Jodi had mentioned, the one who did all the scut work for her office. That answered one question.

  “Then today,” Ramon continued, “you said that you would need to do some research into this stalker just to see if you could find him, but you weren’t sure how or when you would have the time.”

  Jodi put the heel of her hand against her forehead. “I barely remember that. The afternoon was a nightmare.”

  “Not counting the actual nightmare,” Blue said softly.

  Ramon looked at both of them, eyebrows raised. “Uh, huh,” he said. “Right. No interest at all.”

  Jodi glared at him.

  He smiled at her and said brightly, “So, you know me, I was thinking how do I take that pressure off you? So I looked through all of that material I downloaded for you and I ran an in-kind search to see if I could find the names of the women—”

  “I thought news outlets don’t use the names of women who’ve been sexually assault,” Jodi said.

  “News outlets don’t,” Ramon said, “but police calls do. And since small towns have police blotters, I figured larger towns did as well, the difference being that the larger town police blotters aren’t reprinted whole-hog in a cheesy advertising mailer masquerading as a newspaper.”

  Now Ramon had Blue’s full attention.

  “You didn’t hack into the LAPD, did you?” Jodi asked.

  Ramon smiled widely. “Hack? No. I may have misidentified myself, however, just once or twice in my quest for court filings, not that there were any court filings, since no one knew who to press charges against. But the news stories had the times of day, and the police blotter had the times of day and the divisions and the addresses that the police went to, and home ownership is a matter of public record, and a surprising number of these women owned their homes, so I was able to get names.”

  “I can’t believe you did this,” Jodi said, sounding a little appalled.

  Blue was in awe. He would have no idea how to do any of it. He was beginning to understand why Jodi had hired such a strong personality as an assistant.

  “And once I had the names, I went to Facebook to see if they had any friends in common, and sadly, they didn’t, but they did have work in common.”

  Both Jodi and Blue were staring at him now. Jodi hadn’t had a bite of her pizza since that ostentatious one, but Blue had finished his piece. He was still hungry, but he didn’t get up to get another. He was too riveted by this.

  “They were all assistants of various levels at several different studios,” Ramon said.

  “How is that work in common?” Blue asked.

  “Ah, the same position, different titles in different places of employment,” Ramon said. “Very important. They were, essentially, either working for or in charge of casting—not the high-level Brad Pitt kind of casting, but the extras, the walk-ons, the bit parts. These women carried clipboards and assessed anyone who walked through the door. They had to be attractive women because—hello!—this is Hollywood, but not so stunningly attractive that they would make the talent nervous because—hello!—this is Hollywood.”

  “Oh my God,” Jodi said. “And he’s one of us.”

  Ramon grinned at her. “That’s right. Our FTS is one of us.”

  Blue couldn’t sit any longer. He got up to get his next slice of pizza. “And that’s important how?”

  “I’m the one who handles ninety percent of the hires of the magical in Hollywood,” Jodi said. “They might not come to me first, they might have mortal managers or important agents, but those high-powered pricey types come to me whenever things get a bit—well, one of them described it as ‘too woo-woo’ for him. Things that they can’t explain they dump on me. And most of what our people do no one outside of our little world can explain.”

  Blue picked up the entire pizza box and moved it to the table, mostly to mask his own nerves. Then he sat down again and took two pieces. Ramon took another.

  “You know the stalker, then?” Blue asked.

  He couldn’t understand, if the Fairy Tale Stalker had met Jodi, how come the stalker hadn’t targeted her. Then, for a brief second, Blue wondered if the curse problems Jodi had came from the Fairy Tale Stalker. But Blue immediately rejected that. If she had been noticed by the Fairy Tale Stalker, then she would be seeing that guy and not Blue.

  “I don’t know if I know him,” Jodi said. Then she looked at Ramon. “Do I know him?”

  “You met him once, shortly after he arrived,” Ramon said. “You thought he looked and acted normal enough to follow traditional lines of employment. You hooked him up with one of the major talent agencies in town, supervised the meet like you always do, and then let everyone know if there was a problem, they should come to you.”

  “Has anyone come to me?” Jodi asked, sounding just a bit nervous.

  “No,” Ramon said. “And it was nearly a year ago. This guy is unbelievably normal, good-looking enough to get cast, and from what I put down in your notes, has a mild amount of charm magic.”

  Jodi looked at Blue. “That can’t be a coincidence,” she said.

  “How do you know you have the right man?” Blue asked. A lot of people from the Kingdoms had a bit of charm magic combined with other magic. Some of the Prince Charmings had a lot of other magic. Sleeping Beauty’s Prince Charming, Alex Blackstone, h
ad oodles and oodles of magic and wasn’t above using it—he had, in fact, used it for centuries.

  Blue had always wondered what he would have done if his magic had extended beyond charm. He always thought he could have spelled himself to control himself—no alcohol, no outside influence. But of course, he had it wrong. He hadn’t known what caused the problem, and even with all of that magic, a self-cast spell wouldn’t have worked against a curse.

  “I know I have the right man because of police sketches and head shots,” Ramon said. “Let me show you.”

  He got up and went into the living room. Jodi used the break to finish her piece of pizza and take another. Blue finished his pieces as well.

  Ramon came back with a manila folder. He went to the side of the table that didn’t have pizza or plates and spread some images across the tabletop.

  “I searched through our system by description,” he said. “And I modified by timeline. So they said that he had dark hair, so I eliminated all of the blonds, you get the idea. Now, come over here.”

  Blue wiped the grease off his hands with his napkin as he walked over to that part of the table. Jodi brought her plate, eating that other piece of pizza. She clearly had realized how hungry she was.

  “These are the police sketches,” Ramon said, pushing three pieces of paper down to the edge of the table.

  Blue recognized them. He’d been staring at them for hours the night before. The dark hair, the narrow mouth. The man didn’t look ordinary, but he wasn’t that distinctive either. He was, if Blue had to describe him, very Hollywood attractive. Square-jawed, high cheekbones, broad forehead.

  “And these,” Ramon said with a flourish, “are the head shots.”

  Jodi gasped beside Blue, and Blue didn’t blame her. It was almost as if the police artist had used the professional photographs as a template for the sketches. The photographs were softer—the Fairy Tale Stalker had been trying to get work, not look menacing—but they were so similar that there was no doubt.