Charming Blue (8 page)

He ran a hand over his mouth. She could almost hear that defensiveness he had had the day before:
I
didn’t put up any wards.
I
can’t do that kind of thing.

He didn’t say anything. She couldn’t tell if he was at a loss for words or if he was being purposefully silent, so she said, “I can tell you how to take them down.”

He threaded his hands together. This time he turned all the way, but again, he kept his head down. “Why do I have to take them down?”

He didn’t sound surly; he sounded worried. He understood magic, then, and all of its good and bad attributes.

“Because I can’t,” she said. “I didn’t make them or buy them. And I don’t live here.”

He nodded, then licked his lower lip. He ran a hand over his face again and looked at the wall just past her. It made her feel better that he had raised his head slightly. She could see his eyes now, even though he still wasn’t looking at her directly.

She hadn’t imagined it yesterday; he
was
the most gorgeous man she had ever seen. She had no idea how that was possible, given how many amazing men she’d met, drop-dead beautiful men who got paid to share their beauty on film.

But there was something else to him—a sparkle, a shine, a gloss—something that made him seem even more handsome, even with the weird behavior.

She would have to do some reading on charm magic. She had avoided it until now. The charming ones usually didn’t need her services to get work in this town. Either they had enough money, or someone approached them à la Lana Turner in a drugstore.

“So someone who lives here put them up?” he asked.

“Not necessarily,” she said. “It has to be someone with a legitimate connection to this place. An employee could do it. An absentee owner, an heir of that absentee owner, a relative of yours—”

He actually shuddered as she said that and shook his head. The movements were small but noticeable.

“—even someone who supplies the place with food on a regular basis,” she said. “Anyone could do it with the right connection.”

“So why can’t you?” he asked. “You’re here.”

“I’m here as a favor to someone else,” she said. “I have no real connection here. Besides, these went up before I got here.”

“Did they go up before I got here?” he asked, clearly looking for an out.

“No,” she said.

His eyes flicked toward hers for just a moment, and then his eyes moved away quickly, like a child who had been told not to look at something but couldn’t restrain himself.

She had had enough weirdness. “Why don’t you look at me?”

“Personal quirk,” he said too quickly.

“No, it’s not,” she said. “You looked at Dr. Hargrove when he spoke to you. You don’t want to look at me. I want to know why.”

He shook his head. “Really, it’s nothing.”

“If it was nothing, then you should look at me,” she said.

He swallowed and closed his eyes. Then he turned his back on her. “You know who I am, right?”

“Of course I do,” she said. “That’s why I’m here.”

“No, you’re here because Tank asked you. If she had asked you to see some homicide cop to see if there were murders that were similar to the stalkings, you would have done that, right?”

Her heart raced. “There are murders similar to the stalkings?”

“No, no. I didn’t say that.” Then he bowed his head and paused for a long moment. “I don’t know anything about these events or anything else that’s been happening in the Greater World since I got here.”

“But you know what’s going on in the Kingdoms?”

He let out a small sigh. “Hell, I haven’t been there in a century or more. No, I don’t know anything.”

He seemed defeated somehow, as if this very conversation hurt him. She didn’t have a lot of experience with criminals. She didn’t know if they could all affect this vulnerable stance or if only the ones with magical charm could pull it off.

“All right then,” she said. “For a brief moment, you managed to deflect my question, but now I want to return to it. Why won’t you look at me?”

He shook his head. “Please. There’s nothing I can say.”

She crossed her arms. He had been making her uncomfortable. Now she was making him uncomfortable, and she rather enjoyed it. She hated behavior she didn’t entirely understand.

“Say it anyway,” she said. “I know who you are. I know what you’ve done. You can’t say anything to make me think less of you.”

He bent his head even more, as if her words were a blow. “I’m not trying to curry favor—”

“Good,” she said. “You’re not going to get it.”

He nodded. “So long as we’re clear.”

Then he took a deep, visible breath and turned around. This time his gaze met hers, for just a second. Eyes wide, clear, a small frown line creasing his forehead. After a moment he blinked and looked down.

“I know what I’ve done,” he said softly. “I know I don’t deserve your respect or even your attention. It’s just that, for the most part, I don’t remember doing any of those things in my past. I did them, there’s no doubt about that, but except for a few random images, I can’t remember anything.”

She waited, her stomach twisting. She had asked him to explain, and so he was. But she didn’t have to like what he was saying.

“The women who died were… well, one was my wife.” His voice was very soft. “The others were my fiancées, and then toward the end just women I had conversations with. It got twisted in the retelling that they were all wives. Maybe it would have been easier if they had been.”

“Easier?” Jodi asked in spite of herself.

“Yeah,” he said. “I would have known how to stop my behavior. I wouldn’t have married anyone.”

Her breath caught. He sounded so smart, so calm, so
rational
. No wonder Tank believed him. The charm combined with the way he took responsibility was attractive.

This was how cult leaders did it—they made the unreasonable sound reasonable.

Her silence seemed to bother him. He shrugged, still not looking at her. “No one has died at my hand in several centuries. No one has died in the Greater World.”

What, do you want a medal?
she almost asked but didn’t. She resorted to sarcasm when she was uncomfortable. And right now, she was so uncomfortable she was ready to back out of this room.

“Since the last death, I haven’t looked at a woman. I haven’t talked to a woman, except in passing, and I never ever touch one. I try to avoid people as much as possible. I’m afraid if I get to know a woman’s face, the image will get in my brain, and then…”

He closed his eyes. She waited.

“Then it’ll start all over again,” he whispered.

He opened his eyes and looked at her. She had an odd sense that she was seeing down to the very core of him.

“I don’t want it to start again, can’t you see that? I’m doing everything I can to prevent it. You’re the first woman I’ve talked to in at least a century—”

“That’s not true,” Jodi said. “I’ve seen you talk to women at parties.”

He shook his head. “They talk to me. Mostly they tell me how much they despise me or how badly they want me to leave. Sometimes they yell at me. I might talk back, I don’t know, but when I’m drunk, nothing stays in my head.”

Her eyes narrowed. This sounded plausible. She hadn’t seen him have actual conversations. She’d seen people talking to him, and then the situation devolving into fights or upset. But an actual conversation, no.

“Is that why you come to parties? To talk to women?”

He shook his head. “I never plan to come. Then I get drunk, and I think I can lurk in a corner, maybe cage a free drink. I never really look at anyone, and then I get tossed out.” He shrugged. “Weirdly, I’m an optimistic drunk.”

Jodi didn’t want to think about that.

“What about Tank?” she said. “She’s female.”

“Tank.” He smiled and the smile was clearly a fond one. He seemed to like her as much as she liked him. “Tank isn’t like us. She’s something else. There’s never going to be an attraction because she’s a different species. We had this discussion, she and I, a long, long time ago. And she proved over decades that I don’t have to worry about hurting her.”

“She likes you,” Jodi said, as if that was a character flaw.

He nodded. “I like her too. And so far, that hasn’t come back to haunt either of us.”

Jodi sighed. “So you can’t talk to women because if you do, you might kill them.”

“Yeah,” he said. “To put it bluntly.”

“And you have no control over that?” Jodi said. At least, she had meant that as a question. Instead, it was more of a statement. A statement filled with sarcasm.

“I have control,” he said. “I stay drunk. I stay away from people. I don’t interact. But see, here’s the problem. I am talking to you, and I remember you, and I’m sober, and frankly, that scares the hell out of me.”

She just realized that her heart rate had increased as well. Apparently it scared the hell out of her too.

“What can you do to me?” she asked. “We’re being watched on security cameras, and your magic won’t let you fly out of here on a wing and a prayer. If I drive away, you can’t follow me. If I go home and lock my doors, you can’t get in. If I put up wards against you, you can’t break them. So tell me,
Bluebeard
, why the hell should I be scared of you?”

He looked at her. The color had left his face. His mouth was open slightly. Clearly no one had talked to him this way in a very long time.

“Fifteen women,” he said quietly. “Fifteen women that I
liked
, or worse, that I
loved
. What happened to them…” He shook his head, almost as if he couldn’t contemplate it. Then he took another of those visible deep breaths. “What happened to them shouldn’t have happened to anyone. It was brutal, more brutal than the fairy tales described, and the one thing the fairy tales got right, the one thing, was those heads…”

He bowed his head and put his hand over his mouth as if trying to prevent himself from talking more. Either what happened really did disturb him, or he was the best actor she had ever seen.

But she knew that murderers often felt remorse for their crimes.

“You haven’t told anyone here who you are, have you?” she said softly.

He swallowed hard, let his hand drop, and said, “No. What am I supposed to say? Hey, I’m a fairy tale creature? The worst bogeyman from the very worst fairy tale?”

“No,” she said, “but you could tell them about all the women you killed.”

“To what end?” he said. “Tank brings me here. They guard me. They keep me segregated at my request—at least, until yesterday—and then I get clean. This is—was—the only place where I was reasonably certain people—
women
—could be safe from me. I’d finish my little stint here, and they’d release me, and I’d be drunk two hours later. It worked. Probably better than putting me in prison for life where they couldn’t figure out why I don’t age like everyone else. Besides, Tank would probably bust me out of there. She seems to believe I’m redeemable.”

“What does that mean?” Jodi asked.

He shrugged one shoulder. “You’d have to ask her.”

Jodi frowned. She never would have expected Tank to be susceptible to charm magic. Or at least, not for very long.

So Tank brought him here hoping he’d stay clean, but he never would. Yet he stayed for the entire program each time. There had to be only one reason.

“This is your safe haven, then,” Jodi said. “And I just ruined it for you. You can’t come here anymore.”

“I can stay here if you don’t come back,” he said. “If you stay away, we’ll be fine.”

She nodded once. He didn’t have to ask her twice. She reached into her purse, removed the thick file of printouts that Ramon had made, and tossed them on the coffee table.

“Tell you what,” she said. “You read this stuff. I’ll tell you how to take the wards down, and then you and Tank can discuss how similar this guy is to you. I don’t have to come back, and you don’t ever have to see me again. Does that sound good?”

“Yes,” he said. “Will what you tell me work on all wards?”

“Why?” she asked. “You want to break into my house?”

“No.” He sounded sad. “But I don’t want to know how to break all wards. I don’t want to have that power, you understand?”

Oddly enough, she did.

But she didn’t want to sound in any way sympathetic to him. She didn’t want to give this guy the wrong idea about anything.

“Here’s how wards work, Romeo,” she said.

“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t call me that, not even in jest. Please.”

She frowned at him and continued.

“You can’t touch a ward that’s made to protect someone from you. If you do, depending on the power of the ward, you could get hurt or maybe even killed. You can’t even spectrally cross a threshold that has a ward against you.”