Wickedly Charming (4 page)

He grabbed his badge. He was going to shake it ruefully. Instead, his fingers closed protectively around it.

“I'm bookish,” he said. “Quiet. A bit of—what do they call it here in the Greater World?—a nerd.”

The beautiful woman took a step backwards. Of course she did. Beautiful women, no matter what world they were from, loathed nerds.

“A nerd,” she repeated, as if she couldn't quite believe what she was hearing. “Prince Charming is a nerd.”

“And,” he said, mostly to cover the blush he could feel warming his cheeks, “I'm certain my father didn't help any. He wanted sons, and he blamed Ella when we didn't have any. There was no explaining genetics to him. X and Y chromosomes are beyond him. He'd been urging me to throw her off after our first daughter was born. But then, he also wanted me to use the old-fashioned King Henry the Eighth method.”

The woman frowned. Those pencil-thin eyebrows didn't meet in the middle this time, though. They just danced toward each other for a millisecond.

She had a wide range of frowns—and this one was attractive.

“Divorce?” the woman asked, with an edge of worry in her tone.

Another opportunity to lie. Of course, he didn't take it—and normally he would have. He always lied about his father. Charming wanted people to think his father was a better man than he truly was.

“Um, no,” Charming said, trying to be circumspect. “Henry's… um… other method of disposing of his wives.”

She smiled. Her face softened, and he realized he was wrong. She wasn't just beautiful. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. In either world. Which was saying a lot.

“Oh, my.” Her voice lilted upward, as if she was suppressing a laugh. “He really is the tyrant, isn't he?”

Charming nodded, a bit uncomfortably. He didn't find his father amusing at all. He tried not to look at his father's deeds—or misdeeds. Not that they were illegal. Whatever the King did was legal; that was the law of the land. But Charming didn't have to like it.

“I prefer it here,” Charming said. “In the Greater World.”

With books, books, and more books being created all the time. Not to mention movies and television and games. He was even beginning to like Twitter novels, even though that panel at the last book fair had shaken him more than he wanted to admit. He didn't want the book to die. He wanted it to live, in its lovely hand-held form, for the rest of his (exceptionally long) life.

The woman's smile faded and her mouth twisted again. He was beginning to realize that was a physical sign of her bitterness.

“Of course you prefer it here,” she said. “The Greater World loves you. You're an ideal. Everyone wants to be you or have you or marry you. You're not considered a bitter crone past her sell-by date who's jealous of younger women and can't come to terms with her lost potential.”

Well, they had the bitterness spot on, he thought, but didn't say. Still, he suppressed a sigh. He thought she had seen him for who he was, but she hadn't. She had made up her mind about him on very little evidence—mostly on what she had heard (read?) about him, and on what other people thought.

Although, he couldn't prevent himself from saying, “Aren't you a little jealous of young women? I mean, you mentioned Ella's age right off. And you seem pretty focused on age.”

Snow White's stepmother's eyes widened and her lovely mouth opened slightly. She wasn't frowning now. She seemed stunned. Hadn't anyone spoken to her like this before?

“Look,” Charming said, opening his hands in what Ella always called his don't-blame-me gesture. “You're the one who made the comment about me marrying a girl who was ‘thin, shapely, and oh, so young.' That sounds a little bitter and jealous to me.”

The woman's mouth snapped shut. Her eyes narrowed. “Of course it would seem bitter and jealous to you. I suppose you think I tried to kill Snow White, like the fairy tales say.”

It was his turn to lean back. Behind that bitterness was a lot of anger. A lot of anger. He could feel it radiating off her. And that intrigued him, although he didn't want it to.

Interesting that she thought he believed the fairy tales. He, of all people, knew how false they were. In any of the Kingdoms, if she had tried to murder Snow White, then she would either have been executed on Snow White's wedding day or at least have been imprisoned.

“People like you,” she was saying, her voice getting even more strident, “believe in the fairy tales. Why shouldn't you? You live one.”

He sighed. He didn't think divorce was part of the fairy tale, but he couldn't get a word in. She hadn't stopped talking.

“People like you,” she said, “don't understand people like me. You have everything in life, and you don't understand people who have to fight for every scrap—”

“You're right,” he said flatly.

She stopped, as if she was surprised at his words. Apparently, she didn't expect him to admit anything.

But he wasn't going to say what he really thought. He hated it when conversations veered in this direction. He was in a damned-if-he-did and damned-if-he-didn't situation. If he said he understood, he'd have to prove it, with life experience that she might or might not believe. And if he said he didn't understand, then she'd try to convince him. So he gave her his standard answer, the answer that allowed him to abandon the field.

“I don't understand people who like to fight,” he said. “I never have. So have a good book fair, and I'll see you around.”

He slipped past her into the hallway, feeling unsettled and somewhat disappointed. He liked her despite her anger, and it wasn't often that he found a woman attractive anymore. Most women his age had given up or had snared the right man and weren't interested in meeting anyone new.

But he didn't need the bitterness. He had enough of his own. He just tried not to think about it.

Just like he tried not to think about what the world—his world—required of him. Technically, he should marry a younger woman and give his father the heir that his father was clamoring for. But Charming had already married a young woman, and that hadn't gotten him anywhere. And besides, he had children. Two lovely, intelligent daughters who he didn't see enough.

He found the stairs and took them two at a time, putting some distance between him and Snow's stepmother. He wondered what she would say if he told her he understood her bitterness, if he told her that he understood the weight of all those expectations.

Just because the expectations were good didn't mean they were harmless. He had been handsome and charming and where had it gotten him? Certainly not to a happily-ever-after.

He wasn't even sure he believed in happily-ever-afters.

The doors to the main exhibition hall were opening as he walked past, and his heart took a small leap. He was still unsettled—he really hadn't expected to find someone from the Kingdoms here—but he was getting past that. And considering how big this place was, he probably wouldn't see her again.

Which bothered him more than he wanted to admit.

Mellie leaned the back of her head against the function room door, feeling unbelievably stupid. Charming had just shut her down. As i
f she were nothing.

I don't understand people who like to fight
, he had said, as if she were one of them, as if she didn't have
a cause
.

She had cause to be angry, surely he could see that?

But she had been angry at him, partly—if she were truly honest with herself—because she was so attracted to him.

How clichéd was that? Being attracted to Prince Charming.

She shook her head and stood up. The worst thing she could do was go to the interview room right now and try to charm her way in. She could barely charm anyone on a good day, and at the moment, this wasn't a good day.

She had just embarrassed herself in front of a Charming.

A Charming she was attracted to, which had never happened before. She hadn't found a Charming attractive ever in her life (except this one, that day more than a hundred years ago). But then, she had blamed it on her exhaustion. Right now, she had no such excuse.

She headed back to the parking lot.

It was full now, cars stretching as far as the eye could see, glinting in the bright Los Angeles sun. It could be anywhere in Los Angeles—a huge parking lot filled with late-model cars, a warehouse-sized building filled with people doing something important, a few sickly trees, an unused sidewalk, and wide roads where the cars sped by too fast.

As she strode across the asphalt, she saw her people gathered around her minivan. They weren't in any order—it was hard to organize archetypes. And none of them were leaders. The leaders either remained in the Kingdoms or they had vanished to the winds here.

So she liked to think. Since it was clear, even from a distance, that only about half of the members of the California branch of PETA had shown up. Half of the ones who had RSVPed, that is. If Mellie had gotten half of the members of the California branch of PETA to show up, her people (if you could call them that) would have outnumbered the people in the book fair.

California had the largest number of archetypes in the United States, and in the top ten for archetypes in the Greater World. Most of the archetypes who had left the Kingdoms in the past fifty years had come to California. Most of the archetypes had to find work here because they needed money to survive. Kingdom money didn't translate, unless it was gold, and most of the archetypes couldn't get gold.

Mellie had had more gold than she knew what to do with, and she had sold a great deal of it in her first foray into the Greater World back in the nineteenth century. She had claimed she found it in California, in the so-called Gold Rush, but mostly she had brought it with her when she moved.

Mellie sighed and surveyed her troops, such as they were.

She had ended up with fifty-one protesters, fifty-two if she counted herself. They gathered around her van, picking at the signs, and quarrelling amongst themselves.

Some had been in the Greater World for years, and had trouble finding work. The assorted woodland creatures—the birds that always seemed to guard Cinderella, the rabbits who had befriended Thumper in order to get close to Bambi, and of course, the poor deer hunter who got such a bad rap for murdering (murdering!) Bambi's mother—hung around the edges. A small grouping of tiny fairies—the ones who formed Tinker Bell's entourage before she decided to stalk Peter Pan—hovered in the center, dressed like Goth teenagers, and looking more like little girls trying to dress like their older sisters.

Those fairies had somehow divorced themselves from the Fairy Kingdom of Celtic lore. Or maybe they had never been part of it.

Mellie couldn't keep track of all of the archetypes in the Greater World. There were also the Greek Gods, whom she avoided whenever she could, and some really nasty magic users.

Two giants had joined her group, which was two more than last year, but only because they'd been cut by the NBA because they weren't agile enough. A few ogres stood to one side, wearing pirate scarves around their bald heads and rather ornate parachute pants with matching tops that somehow suited them. The little people were underrepresented for once—she'd heard that someone was filming
Return to Oz
all over again and needed Munchkins, realistic or not.

But the flying monkeys were here—or at least a few of them were. The ones who thought a movie like
Return to Oz
beneath them. The flying monkeys, a few trolls, one of the Billy Goats Gruff.

No real celebrities, however. No other stepmother, none of the witches, none of the crones (although, to be fair, most of them had moved to England and Canada, finding all kinds of work in the Shakespearean companies at the two different Stratford-upon-Avons). Mellie was the biggest archetypal celebrity at the fair, if you didn't count Charming (and why should she? He wasn't part of her group).

Rumpelstiltskin had shown up, but he never missed a protest. He loved creating havoc—and enticing beautiful women to bear his children. Mellie had never understood what attracted all those women to Rumpelstiltskin, but something did, because he'd fathered half-a-dozen children out of wedlock just since he moved to the Greater World. Fortunately for him, he was one of the best con men ever, and could spin metaphorical straw into very real gold.

He was a perfectly proportioned man who wore his clothes very well. His navy blue suit was silk and had to be too hot in this climate. His shirt was white silk, and he wore custom-made shoes. He leaned against the van as if he were posing for an automobile ad.

He could have led this group, but he knew better. The one time he had tried, Mellie had gotten furious and he hadn't liked that.

Not because he couldn't deal with furious women—it seemed furious women were his specialty, along with long cons—but because he really liked and respected her.

He wasn't a bad guy underneath that conniving personality. In fact, he was one of the few archetypes who truly understood what she was trying to do.

He winked when he saw her approach. Then he inclined his head toward the back of the van and her heart sank.

The disheveled man sitting half in and half out of the van was trouble. He, too, wore a blue suit, but the suit looked like he'd been wearing it for weeks. His hair hadn't been combed in just that long. It had gotten tangled in his beard which was… blue.

Really and truly blue. Smurf blue.

When he cleaned up, that Smurf blue accented his eyes. He looked like he was made of sapphires. He was breathtakingly handsome underneath the mess, which was how he had married all those women, and he was, unlike the other archetypes, the only one who wasn't unjustly accused.

Bluebeard.

Mellie shuddered as she looked at him. He must have escaped again. No institution in the Kingdoms could hold him, partly because he was a very wealthy man, and partly because he was rumored to be a king's son—another Charming gone wrong, probably.

Badly, horribly, awfully wrong.

She sighed. She'd have to deal with him immediately. She couldn't let him inside the book fair. All the attention would be on him, and not on her cause.

As she walked up, she pulled one of the fairies aside. The fairy, blond and pale just like Disney's Tinker Bell, had gossamer wings and the most wicked tongue Mellie had heard on anyone, bar none.

The fairy kept her name secret like all fairies did, but she was known as Cantankerous Belle—Tanker Belle for short.

“I know, I know,” Tanker Belle said in her deep, gruff voice. She sounded like a full-size human chain-smoker—Bette Davis combined with James Earl Jones. “The minute I saw him, I knew you'd tap us.”

“Sorry,” Mellie said.

Tanker Belle shrugged. “What this time? Wrap him in some glamour and get him off the property?”

“I'd say yes, except this is a three-day affair.”

“There's an upscale rehab center on the coast,” Rumpelstiltskin said. He hadn't moved from his perch against the van. “I have his credit card. He can clearly afford it.”

Mellie didn't want to know how Rumpelstiltskin had gotten Bluebeard's credit card, but she was grateful.

“A twenty-eight-day program?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Has he been drinking?” she asked.

“You want to go sniff him? He's either been sleeping in booze-soaked linens or he's been soaking it up himself.” Tanker Belle hovered in front of Mellie like a giant hummingbird.

“Okay, then,” Mellie said. “Get the address from Stilt over there.”

“And the credit card,” one of the other fairies said. “Last time, he didn't fork it over, and I paid.”

She shook a tiny fist at Rumpelstiltskin.

“You still owe me,” she said.

“I'll pay up,” he said. “You just say when and how.”

Then he grinned, and to Mellie's surprise, the fairy grinned back. Mellie shook her head, not fully comprehending the interaction—or, to be more accurate—not wanting to.

She made her way through the crowd of archetypes, heading for the signs. She needed to get the group organized. And she wanted to avoid Blue.

But that wasn't in the cards.

Tanker Belle was right—he smelled like he'd been bathing in whiskey. Whiskey and Aqua Velva. And vomit.

Not the best combination on a good day. And this was not—by any stretch of the imagination—a good day.

“I wanna help out,” Blue said.

He had a lovely voice. Musical, deep, with enough of an accent to make him seem exotic. Or at least, he would seem exotic, if she hadn't heard it all before.

“You'll help out by going with Tanker Belle and the girls,” Mellie said.

“Ah, Mel.” Blue put his meaty fist on her shoulder. “I'm terribly misunderstood. I can talk to the press. I took classes in media relations at UCLA.”

Somehow that didn't surprise her. She slipped out of his grasp and resisted the urge to wipe off her shoulder.

“Blue, you're not sober,” she said. “Being sober is one of my rules, remember?”

He rolled those pretty blue eyes. “Hon, I don't do rules, except my own.”

“Which is another reason I don't want you here,” she said.

He leaned closer to her. A few of the woodland creatures gasped in disgust. It took all of Mellie's strength not to do the same.

“Everybody's got a story,” he said. “You've never asked mine.”

“I saw the heads,” Mellie snapped. “I knew some of those girls.”

He frowned and backed away, just like she knew he would. She'd said that to him five years ago, ten years ago, fifteen years ago. Each time, it made him walk away.

Only this time, he said, “You listen to everybody else. How come not me?”

“Sober up, Blue, and maybe I will,” she said.

“I've talked to you sober before,” he said.

“Sober up for more than a year,” she said. “Then we can talk.”

She snapped her fingers, and Tanker Belle flew over.

“C'mon, monster,” Tanker Belle said. “We got a rehab facility to fly to.”

“I told you before, Tank,” Blue said. “I hate to fly.”

“And I told you before, Blue,” Candy said. “It's Tanker Belle to you.”

She wrapped him in fairy dust and beckoned her companions. They attached little gossamer strings to the cocoon of fairy dust and raised him up, as if he were made of air.

Mellie looked around the parking lot. There were a few booksellers mingling about, a couple of authors arriving too late to get parking, and one or two of the union men who'd been carrying all that equipment. None of them looked over this way.

Even if they did, they wouldn't see anything. Just a bit of a heat shimmer or a glimmering caused—they'd think—by the sun. The more sensitive of them would see tiny birds, maybe even hummingbirds, flying in a circle, and they'd wonder why there were hummingbirds in the middle of a parking lot.

But they wouldn't wonder long. They'd return to whatever else they'd been doing and forget this entire incident had happened.

That was one of the neat things about fairy dust. It made people forget.

She'd had Tanker Belle and the fairies intervene more than once when a protest had gone bad.

But Mellie didn't have that option this time. Not with Tanker Belle and her gang funneling (literally) Blue off to rehab.

This protest had to go well.

She had to do everything right.