Authors: Kristine Grayson
“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, had 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.
The black-and-white stills were the most damning. They looked just like the sketches. The color photographs made the Fairy Tale Stalker a bit more human to Blue. The man’s skin tone was a bit uneven—probably because like most people from the Kingdoms, he wasn’t used to LA’s level of sunshine—and he didn’t quite seem comfortable in his open-collared shirt. His smile was a bit hesitant, his eyes a little worried, and those details alone probably made it hard for him to get work, what with all the other beautiful people descending on this city each and every day.
Jodi wiped her hand on the leg of her jeans, and then picked up one of the head shots. She flipped it over.
“Gregory Shea,” she said, “and he has a Hollywood address, with a landline. How very not-LA.”
“I already called the landline,” Ramon said. “It’s been disconnected.”
“Of course it has,” Blue said, peering over Jodi’s shoulder at the little white label of information behind the photograph. The man’s name, his address, his phone number, and the name of his representation. “Gregory Shea can’t be his real name.”
“I’m sure it’s not,” Jodi said.
“It’s not,” Ramon said, “But I’ve never heard of him. I’ve got his real name in the file somewhere. He’s like seventieth to the throne in one of the minor Kingdoms.”
Blue couldn’t take it anymore. He had no idea how someone mortal knew all of this. If, indeed, Ramon was mortal.
“I get no sense of magic from you,” Blue said to Ramon.
“And that, my friend, is a tragedy,” Ramon said, “because you and I could make beautiful magic together.”
“The quote is music,” Jodi said, still studying the photograph. “You would make beautiful
music
together. And really, Ramon, he’s not your type.”
“You know, usually you don’t harp on that,” Ramon said. “You let me figure it out for myself.”
Jodi looked up, a bit of surprise on her face. “I do? Really? Well, I’m distracted.”
Her cheeks had grown a bit pink. Or maybe Blue was imagining that. Maybe he wanted to imagine that.
Her gaze met his. The gaze looked steady, which Blue was most decidedly not feeling at the moment, not with her looking at him like that.
“Ramon can see magic,” Jodi said, her tone matter-of-fact, “because I needed him to see magic. He already had a small ability to see auras—there’s someone magical in his past, and since what little magic he inherited had been overwhelmed many, many, many generations of mortals ago, I had to dig, find it, and enhanced that little bit.”
“You make it sound like I’m so inept,” Ramon said, a smile on his face. Then his smile faded, just a bit. “She also added some kind of spell so I can see Cantankerous Belle and all of her obnoxious little friends whom I refuse to call fairies.”
“Not to mention that he can now see people like Gunther for what they actually are rather than how they present themselves to mortals,” Jodi said, still turning the photograph over and over in her hand. She then leaned forward and compared it to the police sketches. Something was bothering her, but Blue couldn’t tell what.