Charming Blue (24 page)

“I don’t like Hollywood,” Froggy said. “I won’t work for some studio. They’ll make me sing that Muppet Green song. I don’t like to be green. I like emerald.”

Which
is
green
, Jodi thought but didn’t say. Her irritation level was high enough without aggravating Froggy further.

“I won’t get you a Hollywood job,” she said.

“Good, because I don’t sing and I don’t do commercials and I don’t do cute.” Froggy slapped one long toe onto the intercom button and leaned forward so he could talk into it. “Selda, it’s me, Froggy.”

“Who else would it be?” Jodi muttered to herself. Blue put a hand on top of hers and looked at her. He shook his head and mouthed,
This
is
a
bad
idea
.

She ignored him while Froggy explained who was at his desk and why they were here.

“…something about a stalker, a curse, and this disreputable Bluebeard.”

The intercom crackled with static. “Is Blue drunk?”

Jodi thought that a good sign: Selda actually didn’t dismiss him out of hand.

“No,” Froggy said with a bit of surprise. “And he’s showered too.”

“Aqua Velva?” Selda asked through the intercom.

Blue was cringing. Jodi suppressed a smile.

“Thank the Powers, no,” Froggy said. “You can actually breathe around him.”

Blue made a sound of distress. Jodi clamped harder on his arm.

“Then send him back,” Selda said.

“Alone?” Froggy sounded alarmed.

“With Jodi, who is probably listening and better have a good reason for this.”

The intercom clunked off. Froggy stood at his full height—which was about as high as the mug of pens on the far side of the desk.

“You heard her,” he said. “Enter at your own risk.”

Blue shot Jodi a panicked glance. She gave him a reassuring smile, then slid her hand up his arm and tucked her hand through his elbow, as if they were on their way to a ball.

He was actually trembling, and his cheeks red. She hadn’t really thought before about all of those times she had seen him drunk and rude and out of control. She had always thought that was the man. But the real man was embarrassed by what he had done, and now she was forcing him to face that.

But wasn’t that part of recovery?

Although she doubted he had planned to enter this stage of recovery today. She doubted he had planned to enter it at all. He had only done his recovery at the rehab center and then, when he left, had deliberately fallen off the wagon.

She led him down the narrow hallway, past a few closed doors, to the open door at the end. Jodi had never seen Selda’s door closed, not even on the worst days.

Selda’s office was huge, bigger than Jodi’s office. Only Selda’s office didn’t feel as big. Part of it was the gigantic fireplace on one side of the room, part of it was all of the comfortable upholstered furniture scattered about. Some of the chairs already had cats on them, one had a dog sprawled across its entire length, and only two were empty, the two closest to the desk.

Jodi didn’t know if that was by design. Selda had one of those offices where nothing seemed like it was by design, and yet it had to be, from the spider plants hanging off all the surfaces to the macramé plant hangers filled with climbing ivy in front of the windows to the constantly percolating pot of coffee in the very back.

In the center of it all was Selda, a woman as large and comfortable as the furniture. She had been gorgeous once—Jodi had seen the images—but she had let that slide as her reputation disappeared. She had saved two children on a very harrowing night in the woods and had gotten excoriated for it for decades. Branded an evil witch, she was actually shunned by people who had once cared for her, and eventually she had come here where her reputation preceded her.

She transformed herself with Jodi’s help, landing the gig as “Mother Nature” on a series of commercials in the 1970s. She had almost balked at the tagline—
It’s Not Nice To Fool Mother Nature
—because it was followed by a peal of thunder and a crack of lightning, but Jodi convinced her to do it, and ever since, people (mortals) had reacted well to Selda.

The commercials had captured her warmth and her power. Jodi had liked that. Selda had felt exposed and had left the business shortly thereafter to continue her work here at the Archetype Place.

She stood behind the desk as they came in, a tall square woman wearing a brown and orange caftan. The caftan suited her. It matched her curly brown hair and should have made her eyes sparkle.

But she wasn’t sparkling anywhere. In fact, Jodi had never seen Selda stand when someone came into her office. Selda had her hands behind her back and she was watching Blue warily.

If Jodi didn’t know better, she would have thought that Selda was frightened.

“I’m letting him in here because of your phone message last night,” Selda said. “You sounded distressed, and Tank leads me to believe it had something to do with that stalker. Now you come here, dragging the real Bluebeard, and I’m worried.”

Jodi hadn’t expected Selda to start. “When did you see Tank?”

“Before she went to see you. She said she had it under control,” Selda said. “Where is she now?”

She asked this last question of Blue as if he had done something with her.

He glanced at Jodi, who kept her hand clamped on his arm. “I—um—”

“She’s in my car,” Jodi said. “I made the mistake of taking her to Echoes. She’s sleeping off her food coma.”

Selda grunted.

“Look,” Blue said. “I know you don’t want me here. Let me just apologize for everything I’ve done, and all the things I’ve said, and then Jodi can talk to you. I’ll wait with Tank—”

“Jodi wants you here,” Selda said. “So you stay. Sit. And I don’t want to hear some twelve-step apology.”

She waved her hand at the two open chairs near the desk.

This time Blue didn’t argue. He glanced at Jodi. Together they went to the chairs and sat down. Jodi had to let go of his arm to do so and felt it as a real loss.

He didn’t look at her. Instead, he looked directly at Selda, his hands gripping the arms of the chair as if it was about to levitate.

“I owe you an apology,” he said. “And it would be real.”

“I don’t care,” Selda said.

Selda sat down too, but she didn’t lean back like she usually did. Instead she leaned forward, elbows on her cluttered desk.

She looked directly at Jodi. “Curse? Fairy Tale Stalker? And now Blue in my office. This had better be worthwhile. I trust you plan to tell me everything?”

And so Jodi did.

Chapter 30

Or at least, Jodi told Selda everything she knew. There was a lot of information, but as Jodi told the tale, she realized there were a lot of gaps as well. And Blue wasn’t doing anything to fill them in.

He sat quietly, not moving, as if he expected Selda to banish him immediately.

Jodi had never seen someone with such a large presence recede into the background the way Blue had. It was as if he had shut off his charm, as if he had taken his personality and shoved it into a corner of himself. He was trying to fade away, and he was doing a very good job.

Or so it seemed to her. But she was trying to focus on Selda, who was listening intently. Selda’s gaze never left Jodi’s.

“You’re certain this is a curse?” Selda asked as Jodi finished.

“I’ve never seen a curse before, but this seems to follow all the signs,” Jodi said. “The magic is threaded through his. You can see it in his aura.”

“I can’t,” Selda said. “I don’t have that kind of magic. But you’re excellent at what you do, Jodi. I don’t need a second opinion for this. I’m just amazed no one has noticed it before.”

She still didn’t look at Blue as she spoke, and he remained relatively motionless. It had to take a lot of concentration to keep himself that still. But Jodi didn’t look directly at him either. She didn’t want to make him more uncomfortable than he already was.

“There’s a reasonable explanation for that,” Jodi said. “It’s only visible once the curse activates. Otherwise it’s dormant. All you can see in his aura is charm magic.”

“And now it’s different?” Selda asked.

Jodi nodded. “Just since yesterday.”

Selda let out a long sigh. “We’re dealing with someone quite powerful then, someone with magic that can span centuries. And work on multiple people at once. That’s rather terrifying. I would think the Fates would shut him down.”

“Not without a complaint,” Jodi said.

“And curses are too subtle for a complaint before the Fates,” Selda said. “You’d have to know who placed the curse to stop the curse.”

She turned her head, looking at Blue for the first time. Jodi looked sideways at him. He swallowed visibly.

“Well?” Selda said. “Do you know who did this?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t know it was a curse until this morning.”

“And now you’re out, but not drunk.” Selda folded her hands together. “Tell me, is this the first time you’ve been loose in the Greater World without some alcohol in your system?”

“Outside of a rehab center?” Blue asked.

Selda nodded.

“Yes,” he said.

“Well,” Selda said. “I’m beginning to understand the fairy tale now.”

Blue looked confused. Jodi smiled. Selda was referring to Blue’s handsomeness. Jodi had had the same reaction. Her gaze met Selda’s and they had one of those woman-to-woman moments of understanding.

“What does that mean?” Blue asked.

The edges of Selda’s lips turned up, but she didn’t quite smile. Jodi knew the look. Selda wasn’t going to answer him directly.

“You know,” Selda said to Jodi, “I always wondered why the story of Bluebeard was included in a group of fairy tales. Didn’t you?”

Jodi started to answer, but Selda cut her off.

“I mean, at its heart, it’s not a
fairy
tale at all, but a horror story about something rather mundane. What do they call them now here in the Greater World? A serial killer, right? Someone who murders for pleasure.”

Blue said, “I didn’t—”

“There’s no magic in that, no fairies, no bargain with a magical being.” Selda didn’t even seem to notice that he had spoken. “But if you look at the story as the story of a curse, then it belongs in the oeuvre of fairy tales. So those Grimm Brothers screwed up again, taking a tale they knew had magic and removing all the magic from it.”

Selda said that last with a touch of bitterness. Maybe more than a touch. Jodi was getting the impression that if Selda ever ran into the Brothers Grimm (were they still alive? She didn’t know. But assuming they were), then the Brothers Grimm would have a lot to answer for.

It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature
, Jodi thought and smiled to herself.

“Do you think the Brothers Grimm knew it was a curse?” Jodi asked.

“Do you think they knew that I would never harm a child?” Selda asked. “Of course they knew. Those boys had agendas I still don’t understand.”

She turned toward Blue.

“And you,” she said to him, tapping the desktop with her free hand. “You did something to anger them.”

“I wasn’t even in the Kingdoms when they arrived,” Blue said.

Selda made a soft noise, as if that was a missing piece to a puzzle. Jodi didn’t pretend to understand. And honestly, she didn’t really care about the Brothers Grimm. She cared about the curse—all versions of it.

“I know there are people who are good at curse removal,” Jodi said. “Do you know any we can contact?”

“I know several,” Selda said. “Unfortunately, they’re all on other jobs. Rather big ones too.”

“Since when is the death of a lot of women not big?” Jodi asked, a bit snidely. She knew that in the not-so-distant past the death of women was always considered no big deal.

Another thought made her frown. That must have factored into Blue’s father’s decisions not to deal with his “murderer” son.

“Those deaths are big,” Selda said. “It’s just—I can’t tell you what they’re working on, but trust me, if they solve those things, well, look at it this way. Remember the zero-year curse?”

“No,” Jodi said.

“Presidents elected in a year ending in zero died in office, until Ronald Reagan. Remember that?”

“Vaguely,” Jodi said.

“That’s one of ours. We solved it. We stopped the curse. It’s that kind of big.”

“Of course, solving that one had all kinds of other unintended consequences,” Blue muttered.

Jodi glanced at him, but Selda didn’t seem to notice. Jodi bit her lower lip, reminding herself—no politics. No religion. Not even Greater World politics and Greater World religion.

“We could use some kind of support here,” Jodi said. “I mean, it’s just me and Tank and Blue, and we didn’t even know it was a curse until today.”