Charming Blue

by Kristine Grayson

  “We have to visit him,” Blue said. “I’m not leaving you alone.”

  She gave him her best dismissive smile. “You’ll freak him out, Blue, especially when he realizes who you are. He’s terrified of becoming you. For you to show up, well, that’ll probably push him over whatever edge he’s clinging to.”

  “So I’ll go and soften the blow,” Ramon said. “I want to see this guy again anyway.”

  Jodi turned to Ramon. “You remember him, don’t you?”

  Ramon shrugged. “He was pretty too, just not as pretty as your guy there.”

  “He’s not my guy,” Jodi said.

  Blue blinked and looked down, as if her words had stung. Had they stung? She hadn’t meant them to. She wasn’t sure why they would sting. Blue liked her, but right now, any interest he had was just gratitude. When this all cleared up, he would find a woman worthy of him. A woman who was just as beautiful as he was, with just as much charm, who really did want a fairy tale—that happily-ever-after thing that Jodi read about in movie scripts and had never seen in real life.

  Jodi wanted to get past this moment quickly.

  “And as weird as this might sound, Ramon,” she said, “I need you back at the office. I need you to monitor the police scanner to see if there are any more reports of the Fairy Tale Stalker. If there are, you have to call me immediately.”

  “What are you planning to do?” Blue asked.

  “I figure this Shea guy is practice,” Jodi said with more bravado than she felt.

  “Practice for what?” Blue asked.

  Practice for whom, Jodi almost said. But she caught herself. If she told him what she planned, he might try to stop her. And she didn’t want him to do that.

  “Let’s not worry about that right now,” she said in her most soothing tone. “Let’s see if he is what we think he is.”

  “I don’t like that answer,” Blue said.

  “How about we’ll discuss what I’m about to do when and if I’m about to do it?” Jodi said.

  “I don’t like that much either,” Blue said.

  She sighed. “You don’t have to like it. But if you’re going to come along, you have to let me be in charge.”

  “Why does one of us have to be in charge?” Blue asked.

  “Well, duh,” Ramon said to Blue before Jodi could answer. “Because you’re going with Jodi, of course.”

  “Of course,” Blue said, his gaze on hers. The look was unsettling, and it wasn’t until they were halfway to the car before she realized that he hadn’t agreed to anything at all.

  Chapter 41

  Those rent-by-the-week places near the airport all looked the same to Jodi. Square, ten-story complexes that looked like hotels that someone had stretched just a bit out of proportion. These places always had a little too much landscaping—a few too many trees, so that the parking lot was hard to see. The windows had that cross-hatching that was supposed to look like Tudor glass but managed to look like a cheap version of bars over the windows.

  Gregory Shea had chosen one of the more upscale by-the-week places. It had a little courtyard entry, and the faux wood looked more expensive than the faux-wood at the other places.

  Jodi didn’t feel uncomfortable parking the convertible near the side of the building—there were good security lights, and a fence hidden by the bushes. There were visible security cameras as well, and a notice that some major security service patrolled the area. It was all designed to reassure, and it did.

  It made her wonder if this place was the first step for Gregory in his downhill slide: he wanted a place where someone would observe him leaving to stalk the women, a place where someone would comment on his absence.

  Then again, he might be one of those men who couldn’t live without some kind of comfort.

  She glanced at Blue who seemed very nervous. He was looking at the security as well; in fact, he was giving the entire building a once-over. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, either. He had essentially stopped talking to her on the trip here, except to ask her plans one last time.

  She wasn’t exactly sure what those plans were. Some of what she wanted to do would depend on the Fairy Tale Stalker himself, and she told Blue that. He didn’t like the answer.

  She got out of the car as Blue did. She locked it, put the keys in her purse, and walked to the front entrance. Blue did not walk beside her. Instead he was scanning the building.

  “Is this warded?” he asked her.

  She shook her head. If this Gregory only had charm magic, he would have had to buy wards or to have been working with someone who could make them.

  “Why?” she asked. “Did you think it would be warded the way the rehab center was?”

  “Just curious,” he said.

  She opened the door to the lobby. It had a lot of plants, seating groups of leather furniture set off from each other by more plants, two walls of books that looked like leftovers from previous guests, and across the corridor, a small restaurant that appeared to be empty in the midafternoon.

  It was almost impossible to see the reception desk at first glance. Apparently whoever owned this place wanted it to seem as much like a fancy apartment/condo setup as possible.

  The reception desk was behind some of the fake trees and was smaller than Jodi expected. The desk was made of a dark wood, shiny with brass, and the man behind it looked like a manager of some kind.

  She had hoped for a young assistant, someone who would be free with protocol.

  Blue touched her arm as he, too, noted the front desk attendant. “Let me talk to him,” he said softly.

  “Blue,” she said in protest, but he smiled at her ever so gently.

  “Charm, remember?” he said just as softly.

  He walked ahead of her to the desk. He extended his hand, called the man by name, and said, “Just the person I was hoping to see.”

  Jodi wasn’t even sure how Blue knew the man’s name until she caught up to him. Then she saw the man’s name on a little gold name badge with the word “manager” underneath it.

  She hadn’t wanted to see the manager. She didn’t like that idea at all. But Blue was smiling with him, joking lightly, something about the discomfort of being this close to LAX, and the man seemed relaxed.

  “I have an unorthodox request,” Blue said with the kind of confidence that Jodi had only seen in great actors. “My brother is registered here. He expects me tomorrow. I’m supposed to call him when I arrived from Baltimore, but I got here early, and I want to surprise him.”

  Then he put his arm around Jodi, startling her as he pulled her close. He smiled down at her, eyes warm. She liked this. She smiled back, in spite of herself.

  “Actually,” Blue said, “we want to surprise him. He doesn’t know that I just got engaged, and honestly, I didn’t want to play out the scene at the airport.”

  “I can understand that,” the manager said. “It’s nice to see Mr. Shea’s family. He’s been looking a bit forlorn of late.”

  “He sounded down the last time I spoke with him,” Blue said. “I don’t want to call his cell, because then he’ll know it’s me. If you can just give me the number to dial on the house phone…”

  “It’s 9784,” the manager said.

  Blue’s grip around Jodi tightened, and she smiled again. It wasn’t hard to smile, given how savvy Blue was. She wouldn’t have thought to ask for the room number that way. All hotels and most places like this put a nine to make phone billing easy.

  “But,” the manager continued, “why don’t you head up there and knock. That way you won’t be playing the scene out here, either. It’ll give you some privacy.”

  Blue smiled. Jodi had never seen that smile before. It was one part gratitude, one part surprise, all charm.

  “Thank you,” Blue said. “That means a lot to us.”

  He looked over at Jodi, who gave him her best smile. “It sure does,” she said, and kept that smile for the manager.

  The manager didn’t even loo
k at her. He was just smiling at Blue—not in the way that Ramon had, but just like the manager had done something he was proud of as well.

  “The room is 784, and the elevators are just down the hall,” the manager said, nodding in that direction. “And if you’d like some kind of celebration dinner here—I know this isn’t the fanciest of places—but tell Mr. Shea that it’ll be on the house.”

  “I will,” Blue said. “Thank you.”

  He kept his arm around Jodi as he walked in the direction that the manager had indicated. She didn’t mind. In fact, she enjoyed this more than she should have. She made sure her arm was around his back too, so that they looked like a happy couple for the manager.

  Blue snuggled her close even as they rounded the corner away from the desk.

  “Stay like this until we get upstairs,” he said softly. “Cameras.”

  She nodded, then leaned her head on his shoulder as they waited for the elevator. The thing was slow and big, clearly designed for a lot of luggage and people.

  They were able to walk in it side by side, which surprised her. Then they remained close as the door closed. Blue leaned forward just a bit to push the button for the seventh floor, then settled in beside her.

  The mirrors that surrounded them revealed a couple that looked comfortable with each other. They fit together physically. She came up to the right part of his shoulder, and he could hold her close without any discomfort.

  Odd the way she could analyze this. She’d spent so long in Hollywood that she could see at a glance how a casting director would view them. A casting director would think that Jodi wasn’t quite pretty enough for Blue’s girlfriend, but if she had enough personality and was a good enough actress, she might overcome that, because they looked so right next to each other.

  Not that looking right mattered. The Hollywood landscape was littered with real couples who had no on-screen chemistry and just looked wrong for each other. Being perfect for each other didn’t always show up when reflected back from the fun-house mirrors that were Hollywood.

  “You look serious,” Blue said.

  “Well, you got us this far,” Jodi said. “Now what?”

  “Now it’s up to you,” Blue said. “He knows you, and knows your business. I’d say that his agent sent you.”

  She smiled. She hadn’t thought of that. She hadn’t thought of entry at all, which told her how much she was concentrating on the dark magic, and how little she was thinking about the practical things.

  The elevator stopped, the doors opened, and Blue eased himself out of their clinch, moving forward at an odd angle. Then he extended his left hand, which she found weird, even though she took it. It wasn’t until they reached the row of room doors that she realized what he was doing.

  He was making their movements look natural to the manager down below, in case he was watching on camera. The doors to the rooms opened in such a way that Blue on Jodi’s right would be almost invisible from the keyhole, and the person who opened the door wouldn’t see Blue at all.

  He did lead them to the door, and then he knocked, moving back just a bit.

  “What?” came a deep masculine annoyed voice from inside.

  Jodi glanced at Blue who nodded at her. Then she silently cursed herself for asking his permission to do this. (She could probably lie to herself and pretend that she was just acting that way for the security cameras, but she had a hunch she wouldn’t convince herself.)

  “Mr. Shea, it’s Jodi Walters from Enchantment Management. May I come in and talk with you?”

  She heard a rustling from behind the door and knew that Shea had looked through the peephole. She felt her heart lift for a moment, and then he said, “Why the hell didn’t you just call me?” and she knew things weren’t going to be easy.

  “I was at a business meeting at LAX, then I called your agent, and he said you were here. I just figured it was easier to stop than to drive all the way back to my office to call you and have you come see me.”

  “Look, I appreciate it,” Shea said, “but I’m not really interested in work right now. I have a few personal issues to deal with.”

  Blue shifted from foot to foot. He clearly hadn’t expected this. Jodi hadn’t either, but she probably should have. Blue would have retreated in this instance, probably had retreated way back when. Part of her had assumed that Shea hadn’t known he was the stalker. Apparently, he did. He called the stalker stuff personal issues. And he was scared. He probably didn’t want to see women. She should have planned for that.

  “Mr. Shea, it’s an opportunity of a lifetime, and the moment I heard about the job, I thought of you.” Jodi was rather amazed at how easily the lie came. Of course, she said things like this all the time to her clients, and generally only meant half of the sentence—and not always the same half. So the ease with which she lied about the whole sentence shouldn’t have surprised her.

  Shea didn’t respond, which made Blue shift again but actually gave Jodi hope. If Shea had told them to go away immediately, they would have had to improvise something else. But this silence meant that he was actually considering what she had to say.

  Then something thumped in the room, and Blue gave her an alarmed look. But Jodi smiled at him reassuringly. She recognized that kind of thump. It was the thump of a man cleaning up the front room of his apartment.

  “I’m not sure if I should accept work right now,” Shea said, his voice sounding farther away.

  “Believe me,” Jodi said, “you’ll regret it if you don’t take this opportunity.”

  That, at least, was true enough. There was another moment of silence, followed by the slap of the security bar going back. Then the click of the lock.

  He opened the door partway so that Jodi could only see part of his face. A waft of warm, stale air hit her, and she wondered how long he had been cooped up in there.

  “Okay, talk,” Shea said.

  “I really don’t want to discuss this in the hall,” she said. She’d done this before too. “We don’t know who is listening, and this is one of those deals…”

  He sighed, closed his eye, and pressed his head against the door. Then he stepped back, pulling the door open wide.

  Jodi walked in, followed by Blue.

  “What the hell?” Shea said. “Who are you?”

  “My new assistant,” Jodi said. “Sadly, I’ve learned the hard way about the stupidity of going places alone.”

  Blue pushed the door closed.

  The little two-room suite was nicely laid out, with a sofa, two comfortable chairs, even a small dining table near the kitchenette. The door to the bedroom was mostly closed, but a few stray socks prevented it from closing all the way.

  Apparently, Shea had tossed everything in there to deal with later.

  “Sorry,” Shea mumbled. “I wasn’t expecting anyone.”

  Clearly. He had stubble on his face, his eyes had bags as if he hadn’t been getting much sleep, and his hair was newly combed but too long. He wore jeans that looked one size too big, his feet were bare, and he had a dress shirt over it that still had lines from the way it had been folded in its little plastic wrapper at the store.

  “That’s all right,” Jodi said. “I knew I would be surprising you, so I didn’t expect anything special. Just let me take a quick look at you if you don’t mind.”

  He stood very still. “What do you want me to do?”

  Poor man, he had no acting or modeling instincts. If she had told one of her more experienced clients to let her look, they would have preened, then asked if she wanted a runway walk or a pirouette or some kind of pose.

  “What you’re doing is just great,” she said.

  Blue had flanked her. He saw what she did—that this indeed was their man. Shea looked just like the police sketches. No wonder he hadn’t left the suite. It was amazing he had let her in.

  Jodi focused on him, concentrating on his aura. If he was a minor Charming—and she had noted that in his file—then she should have seen some
blue in his aura. Maybe not as much as Blue’s aura, but enough to make the aura bluish, like that light powder blue tuxedos had been made out of in the 1970s (thank heavens that era was over). But she didn’t see anything except some faint amber, and lots and lots of sparks.

  Whatever that spell was, it was dominating his magic. She wanted to say that the spell was eating his magic alive, but she doubted that was how it worked. Because if that happened, the spell would kill him, and it hadn’t killed Blue.

  Instead, she would guess, that the spell used up all the magic, then went dormant while the magic replenished itself. One of the ways that Blue had dominated the spell was to drink the charm away so that the magic really didn’t replenish itself.

  Charm was one of those interacting magicks that needed someone on the other side of it to function properly. A charming loner, in magical terms, was an impossibility.

  Shea’s aura looked broken and out of order, pieces of it jabbing out like badly shattered windshield glass. This was what she had hoped to see—although not in this bad a condition. But the damage to Shea’s aura was similar to what was happening with Blue’s, and Shea didn’t have the magic that Blue did.

  So she might be able to fix it.

  “All right, Mr. Shea,” she said, deliberately changing her tone. “I need to be up-front with you.”

  He froze in place. She blinked twice to make his aura recede.

  She said, “We’re here, not because of a job, but because we know who you are.”

  His eyes got wide and he actually bit his lower lip.

  “I know you’re the Fairy Tale Stalker,” she said.

  He let out a cry and backed up, hitting the table. If Blue hadn’t been standing in the entry, Shea probably would have run to the door.

  “And,” she said louder, holding up her hand, hoping to keep him from panicking too badly, “I know it’s not your fault.”

  Shea had caught the table with his hands. Now he was just braced against it, like a man who didn’t know where to go.

  “What?” he asked in a half whisper.

  “It’s a spell,” she said. “A particularly nasty one. At first, I thought it was a curse, but it’s more vicious than that.”