Charming Blue (2 page)

The Germans were the worst. Goethe claimed his Faust stories were inspired by legends he had heard in a tavern in Leipzig, when actually he had found yet another portal into a Kingdom and barely escaped with his life. And the Brothers Grimm had gone into the Kingdoms on something like an archeological expedition, there to map the Kingdoms themselves, and returning instead with the stories of people’s lives, stories the Brothers Grimm exaggerated and mistold to the point of libel—had libel laws existed between the Greater World and the Kingdoms.

Sometimes Jodi found it ironic that she had escaped her fairy tale existence to come to a place that took the Grimm Brothers’ lies and exaggerated them even further.

But she wasn’t the only fairy tale refugee in Los Angeles, as her front yard now showed. Hundreds of malcontents fled the Kingdoms over the years to come here and have a real life, only to be disappointed at how plain, monochrome, and
real
the lives actually were.

She pushed open the solid oak door and stepped into what had been the living room of the bungalow, now a gigantic reception area with arched ceilings and lots of comfortable seating areas marked off by large fake plants. The cool air smelled faintly of mint, a scent that soothed most of the magical (and most regular mortals as well).

Ramon had suspended two flat screen television sets from the ceiling, high enough to be out of what he called “the magical vortex,” whatever it was that caused magic and electronics to intertwine. Ramon corralled all of the electronics here. He made everyone who entered drop their cell phones, MP3 players, and other gadgets into a basket on his reception desk. If the tech stayed near him, it didn’t explode.

Ramon was pure magickless mortal, thirty-something, although he pretended he was twenty-five. He called himself Ramon McQueen, after Steve McQueen, the rugged 1960s icon, and some tragic silent film star whom hardly anyone had ever heard of and whom Jodi barely remembered. This Ramon was neither tragic nor rugged, but he was very pretty in a way that would have made him a movie star in the 1920s. He wore as much makeup as silent film actors did as well, accenting his sensitive mouth and outlining his spectacular brown eyes in kohl.

He was so good at organizing things that three weeks after she hired him, she looked into his aura to see if he had organizational magic. She could see auras—that was how she read magic. She should have trusted her instincts: he didn’t have any magic at all. But his organizational skills were so amazing that she couldn’t quite believe they had no magical component.

The waiting room chairs were filled with even more clients, potential clients, and former clients, mostly separated by type—human-appearing but magical; minor storybook characters; the enchanted; creatures; half-human creatures; spelled humans; shape-shifters; and little people of all species, races, and creeds. Not all were waiting for her. The creatures primarily went to her best assistant, and the extras (primarily the minor storybook characters and the little people) went to her next best assistant. She had a third assistant whose clients worked for the various theme parks, but they had a separate entrance (with a different receptionist) in one of the outbuildings so that they wouldn’t contaminate the so-called Real Actors.

She had no one who worked animation. (Boy, that meeting still irritated her.)

The conversations were muted. She didn’t allow discussion of magic or former fights or past conflicts, and the magical didn’t like discussing their upcoming work with each other out of fear that someone else might get the job. So what few conversations happened were usually about things like apartment rentals, good deals on costumes, and which vehicles were built solidly enough that their computer components survived long-term exposure to magical fields.

Ramon had muted the two flat screens but had left them on all-news channels—one currently covering the fires in Malibu Canyon, and the other giving the latest lurid details of the case the media was calling the Fairy Tale Stalker case.

Jodi hated the case’s name and wished she could get the media to change it, but she had become aware of the story too late to do anything. Usually she would have managed something. Theoretically, she was Hollywood’s best magical wrangler (although the mortals simply thought she was a manager with some very strange clientele), but in practice, she had become the fixer for all of Los Angeles County.

If someone magical was in trouble, then Jodi usually got involved. Involvement generally didn’t mean more than sending the magical to the organization, but occasionally she had to delve deeper. She didn’t mind. She had been fixing things since she arrived here almost a century ago. Fixing had become as natural as breathing.

“What couldn’t wait?” she asked softly as she opened the gate to let herself into the area behind the reception desk.

Ramon looked up at her. A black curl had fallen over the center of his forehead, and his makeup was slightly smudged. He had removed his suit coat, revealing a gorgeous purple shirt made of some lightweight material. Even that hadn’t stopped a pool of sweat from forming along his spine.

Very unusual. Ramon was usually the picture of crispness, even in the middle of an LA summer afternoon.

“First of all, let me simply say, it is
not
my fault,” he said in that precise way of his. “You made the appointment, and you wrote down the man’s name instead of the company, for heaven’s sake, and he’s a newbie, and I had no idea he was with Disney—”

“That’s fine, Ramon,” she said. “It wasn’t going well anyway. He had no idea who I was.”

“—
and
,” Ramon said, not to be derailed, “she
threatened
me.”

That caught Jodi’s attention. “Who threatened you?”

“That cantankerous little fairy. I rue the day you made it possible for me to see her and her kind,” Ramon said. “If you could ever reverse that spell, I would appreciate it.”

Jodi frowned. She had spelled Ramon so that he could see magical creatures normally invisible to the mortal eye. Only one type of creature fit into his current description. In fact, only one person—if she could be called that—fit.

Cantankerous Belle, better known as Tanker Belle, whom some believed to be Tinker Bell’s older, meaner cousin. Whoever Tanker Belle was, she led a group of tiny fairies who had either divorced themselves from the human-sized fairies of Celtic lore or had never belonged to the group in the first place.

The magical weren’t all from the Kingdoms. And not all of the magical seemed to have problems with electronics that the Kingdom magical did. One faction of the human-sized fairies, who had been involved in a power struggle for more than a century, had found a home in Las Vegas amidst all that technology, and they seemed to be doing fine.

“Tanker Belle’s here?” Jodi asked.

“In your office,” Ramon said. “I can’t make her leave.”

Tanker Belle usually traveled with a posse of twenty or so fairies who flocked around an area like hummingbirds. Jodi didn’t see them, which didn’t mean anything. They could have been hiding near one of the fake palm trees.

“Where’s her entourage?” Jodi asked.

“That’s the weird thing,” Ramon said. “She’s alone.”

That couldn’t be good. Jodi sighed and headed down the arched hallway, past photos of her with her favorite movers and shakers. Some were just plain handsome like Cary Grant, whom she missed tremendously, and others actually got things done, like Jean Hersholt (whom she also missed), and some were handsome
and
got things done, like Brad Pitt (whom she didn’t see often enough). She had photos of women as well, but they were deeper in the hallway, and she didn’t have to look at them every minute of every day.

She dipped into the half bath outside her office to check her hair. She kept it shoulder-length so that it was manageable, particularly since she had the top down in the convertible most of the time. She untied the scarf she wore over it, like Tippi Hedren in
The
Birds
, only Jodi’s hair wasn’t a rich blond. It was a stunning auburn that set off her café au lait skin and made her green eyes stand out. She didn’t have the redhead’s curse of too-fair skin, which made being in the sun easier, but in her early years in Hollywood, her dark skin had kept her regulated to the sidelines.

That was how she got into the management/fixer business in the first place.

She splashed some cool water over her face, touched up her makeup, and made sure her white sheath had no stains from the lunch she’d had in the studio commissary. Then she squared her shoulders, took a deep breath, and headed to her office.

Tanker Belle made her nervous, and not just because the little fairy was well named. It was also because she looked like Tinker Bell, with that lovely blond hair, those big blue eyes, and that perfect female form (with gossamer wings, of course). When Tanker Belle wanted, she could even add a little twinkle to her smile, complete with a soft
ting
of a tiny bell.

Jodi was surrounded by beautiful women all day, and usually they didn’t make her feel insecure. But Tanker Belle did, and Jodi had no idea why.

The door to her office was big and sturdy, carved mahogany, and original to the house. She had no idea what this room was originally used for, although she had suspicions that it was something illicit. The room was big with great views of the back garden—which she had walled off when it became clear that her clients would be standing outside, texting, and ignoring her request to leave the cell phones at home.

Normally just stepping inside the coolness of her office calmed her, but she could sense Tanker Belle’s presence. Even though Tank wasn’t immediately visible, something about her or her magic screwed up the office’s carefully designed comfortable energy.

“Josephine Diana,” Tank said from somewhere near the arched windows. Tank had a voice on her that made her sound huge and tough, like a chain-smoking middle-aged mortal woman. A friend once described the voice as Bette Davis crossed with James Earl Jones. The description was so accurate that Jodi thought of it every time Tank spoke.

“Not fair,” Jodi said as she quickly shut the door. “You know my real name, and you won’t tell me yours.”

Real names had magical power that nicknames and self-chosen monikers did not. Sometimes knowing a person’s real name conferred that person’s power on the person who knew the name. It often gave the speaker a control that she wouldn’t otherwise have.

Jodi hadn’t used the name Josephine Diana since she left the Kingdom. She had gone through several names in her Los Angeles life because mortals didn’t believe that other people could live for centuries and still look like they were in their thirties, but she had found that names which sounded like hers were the best. “Jodi” was her favorite, even better than the Jo she had used in the twenties. It felt like her name without being her real name.

“I won’t misuse it,” Tank said. “I promise.”

She floated down from the ceiling, wings out like a parasail. She wore a glittery black top tucked into a ripped black skirt, making her look like Tinker Bell in mourning. Tank landed on the back of the antique leather upholstered chair that Jodi had set in front of her desk for clients.

Jodi sighed, set her briefcase beside the door, and walked to the desk. It was an old partner’s desk she had bought when Keystone Studio closed. Big, solid, made from redwood back before the days when the trees were protected. She kept the desk polished so that the wood’s rings showed rich and fine. She also had a protective magical cover over it so that nothing would mar its surface.

Her phone vibrated in her hand; she had forgotten she’d been carrying it.
Need
me
to
get
you
out
of
there?
the message read. Ramon, being efficient.

She didn’t answer him—she didn’t have to, unless she really did need rescuing—and set the phone beside the small pot of violets on the side of her desk. She put her purse on the floor and sat down, wishing she had just a few more minutes to settle in.

“You called me from an important meeting, Tank,” Jodi lied. “This better be good.”

Tank sat on top of the chair, lovely legs crossed. On her feet, she wore tiny black shoes that looked like they were made of gossamer, like her wings.

“You’ve been following the Fairy Tale Stalker, right?” Tank asked.

That question could mean many things in Jodi’s line of work, from watching the case unfold to actually stalking the stalker. Rather than risk a misunderstanding, she gave a simple one-word answer. “No.”

“Good gods,” Tank said, “I would think it would be right up your alley. Fairy tales being slandered in the media, quashing the reference, all that.”

So that was what she meant by “following” the Fairy Tale Stalker.

“I tried to quash it,” Jodi said. “By the time I realized what was going on, it was too late. The moniker had stuck. When these things don’t involve our people, I don’t care as much as I would have.”

Tank snorted. “You’re not following this then.”