Authors: Kristine Grayson
“I’m the daughter of chatelaines,” she said. “I can see magic, mostly so I can accommodate it and make the person near me more comfortable. I have a strong domestic magic.”
“And Tank sent you?” He sounded confused. She didn’t blame him. She would never put the words “Tank” and “domestic” together either.
“She did,” Jodi said, “because she knows what I do here in the Greater World. I’m what’s called a fixer. I make things happen, or unhappen as the case may be.”
He frowned. It just creased a small portion of his unlined forehead, making him look intellectual and oh-so-delicious. (And she was freaking herself out, being attracted to
Bluebeard
, of all people.)
“How is that related to domestic magic?”
“Ah,” she said, feeling a bit more comfortable. She had given this speech a million times in her long life. “Domestic magic is all about fixing things so that people enjoy their lives, so that problems go away. Home should be a comfortable, easy place, outside the troubles of the world. So the troubles of the world need to be solved or at least placed at bay. If you take that concept and apply it to work, you get me—a wrangler of the magic by day, fixer by night.”
Most people smiled when she told them that. He just looked down, as if her words made him uncomfortable.
“We’ve met,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.
“More than once,” she said. “And I must say, I didn’t recognize you either.”
He nodded and bit his lower lip, still not meeting her gaze. “So, Tank sent you to see if I was behind this stalker thing.”
“No,” Jodi said. “Tank believes you had nothing to do with it. I’m not sure Tank thinks you did anything wrong ever.”
He shook his head, just a little.
“She believes you might have some insight into what’s going on.” Jodi took a step toward him. “Do you?”
He took a step back and hit the door, putting his hand on the knob. “I didn’t even know there was a stalker until you mentioned it.”
“No television? No radio?”
“No contact with the outside world for sixty days,” he said. “That includes news. If we watch a movie or a TV show, we watch on DVD.”
“Hm.” That revelation made her task a little harder. “I don’t even know how to start on this then. The guy appears in women’s bedrooms, declares that he’s Bluebeard and is going to harm them the next time he sees them, and then he disappears. They get terrified, contact the police, and so far, the police haven’t got a clue what to do about it.”
He swallowed, shook his head again, almost as if he was trying to clear it. His head was low enough to avoid eye contact, but she had the sense he was watching her just the same.
“How did Tank get involved?” he asked.
“She wants to prove that it’s not you.”
He bobbed his head—another nod? If so, it was a private one, meant for him alone. “And how did you get involved?”
“Tank believes that the entire scenario harms our people here. And she’s afraid that the guy will escalate. She thinks you might have some ideas on how to stop him.”
He let out a bitter chuckle, then ran a hand through his thick hair. It fell back into place, looking perfect. “Me. That’s rich. I have no idea how to stop anything.”
“She wants you to help,” Jodi said, not sure what she wanted. All she knew was that she couldn’t leave until he did. He was still blocking the door.
He brought his head up just a little. “Me.”
“
Yes
,” Jodi said, starting to get irritated. Clearly he wasn’t trying to charm her. But she still found him annoyingly attractive—even as he was irritating her.
He made a soft sound, lowered his head again, then moved it sideways, as if he was arguing with himself. “I doubt I can provide any assistance at all.”
“Okay then,” Jodi said. She was about to ask him to move when he spoke again.
“But Tank thinks I can do something.” It was almost a question.
“Yes,” Jodi said, trying not to let her irritation show again.
His broad shoulders went up and down as he took a deep breath. It was almost as if he was bracing himself. “I’ll give it a shot then. I owe her. She’s been helping me.”
Jodi waited. It was a bit like talking to Gunther, only Blue wasn’t physically slow. But he clearly wasn’t used to dealing with people.
He kept his head down. “Can you give me what information you have?”
“Do you have an email address?” Jodi asked. “I’ll send you links and video clips. There’s one from KTLA that has a police sketch, which, I must say, looks nothing like you.”
“Like me now,” he said.
“In any incarnation,” she said.
He winced, ran a hand through his hair again, and once again, it fell back into place as if he had never ruffled it. How far gone had this man been to look as horrible as he had all those years?
“I don’t have an email address,” he said. “No smart phone, no computer, no nothing, not for the duration. Nothing that smacks of outside world. Just bring me some paper.”
He raised his head slightly, looking at her for a brief moment—a heart-stopping moment in which he looked like he might break. Then he bowed his head, turned the knob on the door, and backed out of the room, closing the door swiftly.
She stared at it, her heart pounding. He was attractive. He was beyond attractive. He couldn’t meet her eyes. He was nervous or afraid or just plain off his game, and she still found him attractive.
Which had to be what happened to all those other women. Attractive, blindingly attractive, and then bam,
off
with
their
heads
, as one of those
Alice
In
Wonderland
queens used to say. Of course, Jodi was mixing her literary references. No
Alice
In
Wonderland
here, although she did feel as if she had fallen through a rabbit hole.
She let out a breath and headed for the door. What if he had locked her in here? What if he had trapped her?
Not that it mattered. She was in a rehab center with people watching, cameras everywhere, someone who could get her out if she needed it.
He frightened her. Of course, he frightened her. He was
Bluebeard
, and yet she had felt just a half second of compassion for him.
Worse, if that was the right word, she had agreed to come back. With paper on the crimes. She had agreed to see him again.
And somehow, the very idea unnerved her.
It’s just charm magic
, she told herself. The most powerful charm magic she had ever seen. She hadn’t seen magic that strong in anyone’s aura in years. Charm magic… charmed. That was all.
Next time, she would have her defenses up.
Next time, she would be prepared.
Next time, he wouldn’t affect her at all.
Chapter 6
Blue went back to the pool area and sank into one of the lounge chairs under the shade provided by a gigantic umbrella. His legs could barely hold him up. His heart was pounding.
He had looked at her. He had broken every rule he had and he had looked at her, and God, she was beautiful, and he hadn’t expected it. He should have. He should have recognized her name. He had
met
her, for God’s sake, a number of times, she said, and he could almost remember it.
Stumbling into those parties he always went to when he got beyond drunk and lonely for others of his kind, looking for the bar, scanning the room, gaze falling on the willowy woman with auburn hair, light coffee-colored skin, and stunning green eyes. High cheekbones, perfect lips, features that meant she should have been in a movie, but he hadn’t seen her in a movie, right?
And at that party, he had forced himself to look away, berating himself, then he had gone around the room, past the overdressed, too-skinny things that passed for celebrities these days—how they winced at his appearance, his smell, and they were supposed to. Everyone was supposed to wince and stay away from him. People didn’t always stay away though, so he finally dyed his hair Smurf blue as a big neon warning sign.
That usually worked.
But on this day, in this place, he didn’t have his guard up. His guard was completely shut off here, no bright blue hair dye, no scraggly beard, and no Aqua Velva. It was a great babe-repulser, especially in large doses. The staff wouldn’t buy him any bottles of it; they had done so during his first tour here, and then made him shower after he dumped an entire bottle of the vile stuff all over himself.
After that incident, they didn’t let him wear any cologne here, not even the expensive kind like Ralph Lauren’s Polo or something that someone else (not him) would think twice about dumping all over themselves. He just figured any artificial scent in sufficiently large doses kept people away from him, and usually it worked.
They’d learned. Even his soap and shampoo was unscented. And early on in his rehab, they forced him to take showers. Now he took them voluntarily, sometimes two or three a day, depending on his workouts.
He did have to admit that it was a joy just to be clean. And he thought he could indulge in that luxury here.
He hadn’t expected a beautiful woman. He hadn’t expected to be alone with her. In the same room.
Looking at her.
How many times had he done that? Once? Twice? Three times?
Too many, that was for sure.
He had vowed he would never look at another woman again, because he didn’t want her in his mind. Not even slightly. Because his mind couldn’t be trusted. It would see a woman, fixate on her, and then take over, without leaving him any memory at all.
It would force him to do horrible things, things he never ever wanted to do again.
He looked at his hands. Still shaking. He was lying to himself, of course. Again. He was lying to himself again. Because he did have a memory of each one, his hands around her beautiful neck, the fear on her face, the blood. Oh dear God, the blood.
That’s what he would remember.
And the heads. In that room in his father’s castle—now his castle—now someone else’s castle, because he hadn’t been in it in quite literally centuries. All those beautiful women, women he had loved, or at least liked, women he had thought he had respected. Reduced to heads in a room, skin pale, eyes closed, their beauty intact.
“God,” he said and buried his face in his hands. Then he realized what he had done and pulled his hands away.
And he had told her to come back. With papers.
She would just have to leave them at the desk. He couldn’t take the risk of seeing her again.
She was in his brain, and that was dangerous.
No woman had been in his brain for a long, long time. He hadn’t allowed it.
He stood up, shoved his hands in his pockets, and stared at the pool. The water was completely smooth, the hot sun falling on it and making it very bright. He needed a drink. He needed something to separate himself from his brain, to forget.
Maybe he should leave here. Maybe he should go back into his defense. It had worked for centuries, in one way or another.
But if he left here, he wouldn’t be monitored. No one would keep an eye on him.
And she was in his brain.
Where the pain began.
If he allowed it. If he didn’t have help preventing it.
He didn’t know how to forget her, but he had to. Somehow. He had to pretend this afternoon hadn’t happened at all.
Chapter 7
Early the following morning, Blue stopped near the bottom of the stairs in the main building. Many patients were just coming back from breakfast, and some were heading to a group therapy session. When he had first come here years ago, he found it fascinating how many familiar faces he saw, faces from billboards or album covers or movie posters.
Now he was more or less used to it, and he was unfazed by it. Most of the famous looked as normal as everyone else when they weren’t wearing piles of makeup or had someone doing their hair. Their skin was blotchy, their hair ragged, and their clothing sometimes as ratty as the stuff he wore when he was drunk. Only they wore it as a fashion statement; he wore it as a people repellent.
He didn’t nod to anyone. He never socialized, and he almost never talked to anyone outside of a group session. (Hell, he never talked to them in group either.) Some people thought he was famous because of the charisma that went with his charm powers, and they simply figured he was aloof so that he wouldn’t be recognized.
He didn’t disabuse them of that. And, if the truth be told, he
was
famous, just not in the way that they thought.
This morning he had dressed with even more care than usual. He had gotten up with the sun, done an extra two miles on his run, and showered, discovering that he was still too early for his usual breakfast. He had shaved and picked out a shirt that brought out the blue in his eyes before he realized what he was doing.