Charming Blue

by Kristine Grayson

  And he had already become bitter. If Blue had done something wrong, Danvers pinched him, leaving little bruises everywhere. The bruises were what eventually got him fired. Not the verbal abuse, not his real lack of expertise.

  Those little bruises that Blue’s father could see.

  A prince should not have discipline marks, his father had said and had fired Danvers.

  “Yes, of course I remember,” Blue said warmly. He was focusing as hard as he could on being pleasant, on being charming without being obvious about it. “I never understood why you left. I thought we were doing so very well. I never really did as well after that.”

  That last part, at least, wasn’t a lie.

  Danvers’s mouth twisted. Blue actually remembered that expression. He hadn’t remembered the man, but that nasty smile had remained locked in his memory for a very long time.

  “Your father said I was no longer needed. He told me that you could handle any situation thrown at you.” Danvers’s eyes twinkled, the amber looking particularly threatening. “It took me years, but I eventually proved him wrong.”

  Blue swayed, then caught himself. He was feeling awful. He almost lost his composure at that moment, almost told Danvers that once Blue figured out what was going on—what he believed was going on, in any case—he had found a way to handle it. It hadn’t been pretty, but it had saved lives.

  “Don’t bother to talk,” Danvers said. “I know that your little girlfriend is doing her best to destroy my spell. She thinks it’ll hurt me, when all it will do is murder you.”

  Blue should have felt afraid. He didn’t. He also knew that Danvers was the one lying right now.

  “I’ve had my fun with you and Young Gregor both,” Danvers said, “and now I’m off to find new people to torment.”

  “You don’t like charming men, do you?” Blue asked, keeping his voice level. He wished he was standing a bit closer to the table so he could brace himself. Hell, he wished he could see Jodi so that he could convince her to leave. He had no idea if she even knew this conversation was going on, not while she was trying to eradicate the parasitical spell.

  “I think ‘like’ is one of those misleading terms,” Danvers said. “I think the world, the worlds, really, the Greater World and the Kingdoms, are terribly unfair. There you are, born to power, with your pretty face and your ability to convince anyone of anything, no real talent to speak of, a man who has never worked at anything, and if you had followed your script, you would have gotten your pick of the women, and you would have remained rich and powerful.”

  But Danvers had gotten in the way of that. Blue was seeing sparks in front of his eyes. He didn’t know if that was because he was about to pass out. He hoped not.

  “But I have worked hard to become what I am, and because I am not rich and handsome and born into the right family, people ignore me. Even now, when I am more powerful than the rest of you put together.”

  He peered around Blue, clearly trying to get to Jodi.

  Blue wanted to step sideways but couldn’t.

  “You two really aren’t thinkers, are you?” Danvers asked. “Because, really, all I have to do is this.”

  He clenched one hand into a fist. Something (someone?) slammed into Blue’s back. The pain was excruciating.

  “And,” Danvers said, raising his other arm. “If I do one more thing, you’ll never find me. All I have to do is vanish.”

  He smiled that twisted smile again. Blue shuddered, trying to figure out what Danvers was doing.

  “Because even if I pass out, you won’t be able to trace the magic until it’s too late.” Then he chuckled. “What am I saying? Your friends won’t be able to trace the magic. I’ll be long gone—and you’ll be long dead.”

  Gone. Blue’s brain had become sluggish, but he got that. He used the last of his strength to grab Danvers’s arms and pulled him forward. That made the pain even worse, and Danvers struggled mightily.

  But Danvers was trying to disappear. He was going to vanish as mysteriously as he arrived, and Blue couldn’t allow that. He would stop it with his dying breath.

  Danvers had the wrong kind of magic for this spell. He needed to move his arms to cast it. And Blue couldn’t let him do that.

  All Blue had to do was hang on.

  Chapter 49

  The poison bullet was working, but not fast enough. Jodi could see the green of the poison filtering through the amber. The green actually outlined the complex system of tendrils and vessels and spider veins that made up this gigantic parasite spell.

  She had never seen anything so huge, and she still hadn’t found its head. She had felt the impact of the bullet, seen the amber actually cringe, watched the blue of Blue’s aura grow for just a minute.

  She made another pistol with her thumb and forefinger and shot a second bullet, as big as the first, but it didn’t seem to have an impact either. She was swimming in blue and green and amber light. She pushed in closer, trying to find the head of this thing. It had to be huge.

  It was centuries old. It had been alive, as a spell, as a parasite, longer than she had. She hoped she had enough power to defeat it.

  She hoped she could defeat it without killing Blue.

  But she couldn’t let herself think of that right now. She didn’t dare.

  She was working hard to find its center, when suddenly, a spray of tentacles reached for her. She couldn’t back away—she knew that was what it wanted—and she willed them back.

  Only they burrowed right into her own aura, sending shocks through her. She nearly passed out.

  The tentacles pulled her forward and she slammed against something. She couldn’t see outside of the aura because she was so lost in it, but she had a hunch she had just rammed Blue in the back.

  Then a voice said, We have had you for days. You cannot escape us. Don’t even try.

  It sounded almost like Blue, but it wasn’t Blue. The accent was wrong.

  She had heard the voice of the spell.

  And somehow that made her feel stronger. The spell was right: it had its hooks in her, had since that day Blue looked at her. But she wouldn’t let it defeat her.

  She raised her hands, envisioned little needles on her fingertips, then put one finger on each tentacle. She sent more poison into this thing.

  Green flooded the tentacles. They tried to peel off her, but she stuck her fingers in deeper.

  This thing might kill her, but in doing so, it would kill itself as well.

  Then she saw the head. It peered through the greenish amber goo. Only one set of eyes this time, and all she could hope was that the other eyes—the eyes that belonged to that horrible thin man outside of this spell—were busy elsewhere.

  These eyes, though, were bad enough. They were almost as big as her head. And the pincers they rose above were the size of Gunther’s hand. The edges were sharp. The pincers had hair along the edges—or was that teeth?

  A thread of fear started in her, and she tamped it down. Fear was her enemy, like this thing was her enemy.

  But she finally understood how all the other women had lost their heads.

  No tool had sliced it off. No man had stood over them with an ax, no one had cut through the carotid with a sharp blade.

  These pincers, these giant pincers, had enveloped the head and then bit it off.

  She unhooked her right hand from the tentacles, made one last pistol with her thumb and forefinger, and, as the pincers opened, she fired directly inside.

  Chapter 50

  Something screamed.

  Jodi couldn’t tell if it came from inside or outside of this aura. The amber tentacles that she had let go of had wrapped themselves around her torso and were squeezing so hard, she couldn’t catch her breath. But the tentacles were a dark green at the tips and pale green at the back. When they turned black, they would start dissolving, if they were anything like the things inside Young Gregor’s aura.

  But she wasn’t looking at them. Even as she struggled for ai
r, she watched that last bullet she fired travel inside the gigantic parasite thing. It went down a central core, as if there was one big tentacle (its neck?), heading down, down, down, until it hit large amber rock.

  Only, she realized, that wasn’t a rock.

  That was the thing’s heart. If this thing had a heart.

  That was the foundation of whatever it was, its brain maybe, or maybe just the center of the spell.

  The bullet hit, shattered, and splattered green everywhere.

  Then the green extended outward, met some of the other green, and turned darker and darker.

  She couldn’t draw enough breath to warn Blue to duck. This explosion would hit the center of his back—his torso—sending all of that power, all of that goo, right into him.

  The magical shrapnel from Young Gregor’s spell had burned through the floor.

  What would this do to Blue?

  They were linked through this spell. Maybe she could communicate to him through it.

  She willed him to hear her thoughts. Duck! Get out of the way! Protect your back!

  And then the green dazzled, overtook everything, and she knew, she knew it was going to blow.

  The tentacles slid off her, and she took a breath, about to scream a warning, when the gigantic parasite exploded.

  She got hit in the face with magical goo. It spattered all over her, but it didn’t burn. It smelled like mint.

  Her own spell had hit her—protecting her? She wasn’t sure—but she let her legs collapse beneath her, as much to get away from the rest of the explosion as anything.

  But there wasn’t just one explosion. There were several.

  First the gigantic center of the creature. Then its exterior. Then the remaining amber tentacles. And then smaller explosions as the green destroyed the last of the amber.

  She couldn’t quite cover her head. She needed to see the blue return.

  And it did, for just a moment, before vibrating like bad Jell-O, and then retreating.

  She saw Blue’s back, covered with black stuff, smoke coming off his shirt. But she couldn’t see his aura any longer.

  She grabbed the shirt and ripped it off him. His skin was red but not damaged, at least not yet.

  He was still standing upright. She had expected him to collapse.

  She touched him, and he toppled, and she tried to catch him.

  Her hands hit something else, though, a different torso, too skinny by half.

  A grayish green face rose over Blue’s shoulder. That horrible thin man, eyes closed, expression malevolent, even though he was clearly unconscious.

  Jodi tried to hold them both up and failed. Instead, she slipped down with them, flipping them enough to cushion Blue’s body with her own.

  His arms slipped off the horrible thin man, and that guy fell backward, hitting the bathroom door as he went down, head thumping against the doorknob, then sliding against the door frame, until his skull smacked hard on the floor.

  If he had been partially conscious before, he had to be unconscious now.

  And so was Blue.

  Blue wasn’t there at all. His body was dead weight.

  Jodi clung to him for a moment, hugging him close, thinking Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.

  And then she realized how useless that was.

  She had to try to save him.

  Even though she didn’t have that kind of skill.

  It was the least she could do.

  Chapter 51

  There was no such thing as magical 911 and that, Jodi decided, had to be rectified. She would definitely remember to tell someone to set something up when she got out of this.

  If she got out of it.

  Blue was crammed in the small space near the table and the in-room refrigerator/counter/sink. On the other side was the horrible thin man, also crumpled, a bit of blood seeping from the back of his head across the floor.

  Jodi wanted to get past him, get to Blue, get something done, but the two men were locked together, Blue’s hands on a death grip around the horrible thin man’s wrists.

  Jodi couldn’t separate them. She knew better than to try.

  Or maybe she didn’t know better. She just had to focus on Blue right now.

  His skin was clammy, his color bluish—and not in a good way. It was as if all the blood had left his face. His eyes were closed and sunken into his skull.

  He looked dead.

  She hoped he wasn’t dead.

  She prayed he wasn’t dead.

  She put her hands flat on his chest and started CPR because she didn’t know what else to do. He wasn’t a building or a home, he couldn’t be healed with her magic—any more than she already had.

  The evil spell was gone, spattered all over the room. Amber goo dissolved into blackness, dripping off the walls, the light fixtures, the ceiling, smoking wherever it landed. But the creature itself was gone.

  And so was Blue’s aura.

  She hoped it had retreated, like Young Gregor’s had.

  It had taken Young Gregor a while to wake up. But he hadn’t looked like this, and his hands weren’t locked in a death grip with someone so evil that Jodi didn’t know how to deal with him.

  She didn’t know if the magic was still flowing between them. She couldn’t tell.

  She couldn’t see it.

  In fact, she couldn’t see the horrible thin man’s aura at all or his magic or the magical sparks she had seen before.

  She needed to forget him, at least for the moment. She had to work on Blue.

  Because she didn’t know what else to do, she continued the CPR. What had Ramon taught her to do? Oh yeah. Press according to the beat of that awful Bee Gees song, “Stayin’ Alive.” Ironic, yes. But useful. Very useful.

  Even if she didn’t want that Chipmunk-like chorus of voices in her head right now.

  Still. She pressed to a disco beat. She couldn’t tell if it was working or not.

  She was going to do the breath thing, even though Ramon told her that was discredited now, but she didn’t know what else to do, how else to do it. She wasn’t even sure the compression was necessary.

  Yes, magic had a physical effect, but sometimes bad magic or bad magical reactions caused a stasis, and normal mortal methods wouldn’t help. Even with Bee Gees music.

  She leaned forward, and then, because she couldn’t help herself, she kissed Blue, lightly at first, then putting all of herself into that kiss.

  She had been so stupid. She should have done that before. When he was present. When he could feel it.

  When he was alive.

  His lips were still warm at least. Or maybe they were cooling off. She didn’t know.

  She had not pushed air into his lungs. She needed to do that. She had to hold his head a certain way, and she wasn’t sure what that way was.

  Why hadn’t she learned this stuff? What was wrong with her? Too late to chastise herself now. She had to do everything she could to bring him back.

  She’d do a few more chest compressions, then she’d try the breath thing, and she wouldn’t forget herself.

  She wouldn’t kiss him.

  She leaned back and took a deep breath, ready to start again. Okay, Bee Gees, let’s get the rhythm. She put her hands flat on Blue’s chest when his eyelashes fluttered.

  He smiled, his eyes open, clear and blue.

  “You could do that again, you know,” he said, “and maybe this time I’ll kiss you back.”

  Chapter 52

  She let out a little shuddery breath of surprise and relief, and her eyes teared up and she felt a small bit of anger at that, because she wasn’t a crier, never had been, never would be, but the relief was so great, she didn’t know what else to do.

  So she went for sarcasm, because she didn’t want him to see how moved she was—not that he could miss it. A blind man couldn’t miss it. Heck, people across the street couldn’t miss it.

  “Maybe you’ll kiss me back?” she asked.

  His s
mile was soft, and his eyes twinkled.

  She hadn’t realized how much she loved the twinkle in his eyes.

  “Well,” he said, “I can’t let go of this doofus. If I release his arms, he can cast his spells, and that would be a bad thing.”

  Blue didn’t even move his hands, but he did look down at them.

  That reminder about the horrible thin man tamped down Jodi’s relief just a bit. She glanced at the horrible thin man. He hadn’t moved, and the blood was still seeping from behind his head.

  “I think he’s unconscious,” she said.

  “I’m sure that’s what he wants you to think,” Blue said. “He has a lot of power. He could make us see anything.”

  Okay, now she was frightened. She moved off Blue’s chest—

  “Hey!” he said. “You didn’t have to move.”

  —and she smiled at him. “Let’s take care of this guy first.”

  If nothing else, she would tie him up. She would wrap him in Young Gregor’s dirty clothes, stick one of the smelly socks in the man’s mouth, and drag him into the bathroom, locking him in there.

  She toyed with calling the police—the real police—to see if they could come and arrest him, for what she didn’t know.

  But she needed someone to help, because she and Blue didn’t have the ability to take this guy on alone.

  Her phone was dead. She didn’t know where Young Gregor’s was. She picked up the hotel phone, heard the dial tone (at least that thing hadn’t died—all this magic hadn’t shorted out the entire hotel, which it very well could have), and followed the instructions on the face of the phone. She hit “8” for an outside line.

  As she did, she felt a whoosh of air. She whirled, expecting to see the horrible thin man standing beside her, or hurting Blue or doing something.

  Instead, Tank was fluttering a few inches from her face.

  “You should have called for backup,” Tank said. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  “Don’t yell at me,” Jodi said. “Do something with that awful bad guy. Can you? Wrap him in fairy dust or something.”