Wickedly Charming (22 page)

It was Mellie's first experience with a Gotcha! interview, and it left her speechless. And terrified. But she couldn't confess terrified to LaTisha. She couldn't confess anything at all because she was afraid of making things worse.

Everything started out well. LaTisha had booked them in the nicest hotel yet, with a stunning lobby that paled in comparison to the expansive room. For the first time, Mellie wished she had more time to just luxuriate in the oversized tub or sprawl on the bed covered with linen so soft that it made her want to cry from pleasure.

But she only had a half an hour to freshen up from the trip, so she took a quick shower (and steamed out her blouse), dressed for television—no stripes, no plaids, no small repeating patterns, and no white—and headed back to the lobby with five minutes to spare.

The Oprah rumors had started a cascade of media “gets.” The
New York Times
wanted to interview Mellie when she came to New York. One of
Nightline
's producers had called, as had one of the booking agents for the
David Letterman Show
. Some of the scheduled appearances—like
Live with Regis and Kelly
—wanted more time, and she was even going to get a better segment on
The Today Show
(whatever that meant).

The cab ride was filled with much texting (LaTisha) and Tweeting (LaTisha) and telephone calls (LaTisha) and blogging (LaTisha). Mellie pulled out her phone just so that she could look busy, and because she wanted to let Charming know what was going on.

Only she didn't dare talk to him, not with LaTisha there. So she sent him a text message, telling him she'd call later with very good news.
Things going well
, she wrote.

She had no idea that “things going well” would only last another thirty minutes or so.

The segment, for a major Boston public affairs and entertainment program, was a prelude to a WGBH interview that would be compiled into a series on writers and writing later in the year. Mellie had those two interviews, and one major bookstore appearance later in the evening.

After a quick round make-up session (and arguments about how red her lipstick should be [“Not red,” Mellie said. “Soft.” Again, a prelude of things to come]), she settled into a round, uncomfortable blue chair in a very blue studio with huge windows behind her. The set-up was supposed to look personal and comfy, but only ended up looking like a cross between an anchor's chair and a bad 1960s home design.

The interviewer was not the person that LaTisha had spoken to the day before. That person had been a youngish woman who was trying to make her bones with a “soft” interview about a trendy book on women's issues.

This interviewer was not young. She was a hard-edged woman who had clearly graduated from the ingénue's chair to an anchor position at a C market, and was now trying to make her way into the top tier of television news programming. LaTisha had stopped cold when she saw the woman and had pulled the segment producer aside, quietly begging for someone else.

That, more than anything, panicked Mellie.

When the segment producer said the original interviewer was unavailable, LaTisha asked to see a list of interview questions and was denied. She then tried to pull Mellie out of the interview, but Mellie, in her naïveté, refused.

Later, she would wonder how different her life would be if she had actually listened to the woman whom the publisher had sent along to protect her from herself.

Instead, Mellie settled into that uncomfortable chair, smiled at the overly made-up woman across from her, a woman whose unnaturally brown hair (with very blond highlights) looked like it had been lacquered into place, much like the skin around her eyes, that had already been tucked one time too often.

The woman held an iPad with a series of notes on it. She didn't speak until the red light above the camera came on, then she smiled at Mellie. The smile seemed feral, and for the first time, Mellie had a sense of foreboding.

The woman didn't introduce herself, although the voice-over announcer identified her as news anchor Cindy Jordan.

“Mellie,” Cindy Jordan said warmly and then paused, looking at Mellie theatrically. “May I call you Mellie?”

What was Mellie going to say? No? Although she was tempted to bolt. However, she'd been in the Greater World long enough to see what happened to television interview subjects who got cold feet while on camera—the footage got replayed and replayed and replayed, making the interviewee look like an idiot.

“Of course you can,” Mellie said, smiling her warmest smile. It was the last time she'd smile during that interview.

“I understand that you had help writing your book,” Cindy said.

Mellie wasn't sure if she heard the question right. After all, she was tired, and things seemed strange. “Excuse me?”

She knew that was a lame response, but it was better than trying to answer a question she hadn't properly heard. LaTisha had told her that as well.

“I've been told you didn't write a word of
Evil
,” Cindy said. “Is that true?”

Mellie didn't like lying. She never wanted to lie, not about something important. She'd even discussed this line of questioning with Charming, who had said it would never happen (dammit). When she convinced him she needed a way to answer the question, he said to say…

“
Evil
is my story,” Mellie said as calmly as she could. “It's filled with my life and my opinions, my experiences and my thoughts.”

“But did you write it?” Cindy leaned too close, and Mellie could smell the minted Listerine on her breath.

Minted Listerine covering just a bit of alcohol. A train wreck, just like this interview was going to be. Now Mellie understood why LaTisha was panicked, why Mellie shouldn't have sat in this chair.

But she was here, and either she could stammer her way through the interview or she could take control.

She opted for control.

“Did you hear the question?” Cindy asked. “Did you write this novel?”

“Did you read it?” Mellie asked in the exact same tone.

Behind the camera, LaTisha covered her mouth with her hand. Apparently Mellie had not given the right answer.

“That's not relevant,” Cindy said, as if brushing off a comment about the weather. “What's relevant are all the rumors flying around that you have not written a word of this novel, that you're passing yourself off as the author when in fact a bookstore owner in Southern California wrote this book. A
male
bookstore owner.”

Mellie's mouth had gone dry. She understood all the implications. She even understood how it sounded. Hell, she and Charming had even discussed it—the political correctness of a man writing a woman's novel. Of Prince Charming writing an understanding book about an evil stepmother.

“Is that true?” Cindy asked.

Mellie had no answer. She didn't even open her mouth.

And Cindy Jordan, consummate professional that she was, knew that silence on television was called “dead air” for a reason, and that reason meant the end to an interesting segment, so the woman became judge, jury, and prosecutor all on her own.

“Because,” she said, “in this era of James Frey and all those lying memoirs, all the misinformation and unsubstantiated facts, all the people who plagiarized other people's works and passed them off as their own—”

“I didn't plagiarize anything,” Mellie said, and winced, knowing how awful she sounded.

“Well, yes, how could you when you haven't written a word?” Cindy said, looking at the camera. She wasn't talking to Mellie. She was playing to her audience.

But in doing so, she had given Mellie an out.

“I've written a word,” Mellie said. “I wrote and wrote and wrote on this novel. It seemed like I wrote the book forever. It takes a lot to learn how to write, you know, especially when you're a woman like me who has had no formal education. I spent more time on this book than you can imagine.”

“Are you saying you had no help writing it?” Cindy asked.

“All writers have help,” Mellie said. “My editor, my friends—”

“But you wrote every word?” Cindy leaned even closer, as if she could intimidate Mellie into an answer.

She certainly was making Mellie uncomfortable.

“What exactly are you accusing me of?” Mellie asked.

LaTisha's hand moved from her mouth to her eyes. She peaked through her fingers as if she were afraid to watch. Maybe she was.

“I'm accusing you of perpetrating a fraud on your readers.” Cindy had a triumphant tone, as if she were the defender of innocent readers everywhere.

Even though she had probably never voluntarily opened a book in her entire life.

Mellie squared her shoulders. “I'm no fraud,” she said softly. “I'm the prototypical evil stepmother. I haven't lied.”

The segment producer made a motion with his hand.

“We'll get to the bottom of that after this,” Cindy said, and the red light on top of the camera went off.

“What the hell was that?” LaTisha stayed behind the camera. Obviously she didn't want this part filmed. But she was glaring at Cindy Jordan.

Cindy smiled. She had clearly been waiting for this moment. She waved her iPad at LaTisha, pointing to something on the shiny smooth screen, something Mellie couldn't see.

“I have documentation showing that your client didn't write a single word of her novel,” Cindy said. “Someone named Dave Encanto who has a bookstore in Los Angeles, wrote every word. I have a letter here from a screenwriter named David Bourke, who says that he knows for a fact that your so-called writer here can't write. And I'm scheduled to interview a woman named Essy White-Levanger, who claims that Mellie is her stepmother and can't even read—”

“I can too,” Mellie said.

“—and certainly wouldn't be able to write anything.”

“What is all of this?” LaTisha asked Mellie.

“I don't know about these charges,” Mellie said as she took the microphone off her lapel. “I don't know where they came from or why they're happening now. But I do know that I'm done here.”

She stood up and set the mike on the chair. Then she glanced at the camera. The red light was still off.

Thankfully.

“I'm sorry,” she said as she took LaTisha's arm. “I should have listened to you.”

“Yeah,” LaTisha said dryly. “You're going to have to listen a moment longer because I need to talk to these kind folks. And you're not going to say another word.”

Mellie nodded. She wasn't about to say another word.

“I need your so-called evidence,” LaTisha said. She hadn't moved, even though someone turned a camera toward her. She glared at the operator. “And if you film this, I'll sue your ass every which way from Sunday.”

The camera operator turned the lens away from her.

Mellie stood behind her, heart pounding.

Cindy still sat in her interview chair, as if expecting both LaTisha and Mellie to join her at any moment.

“You have no right to our information,” Cindy said.

“I have every right,” LaTisha said. “You either deal with me or our lawyers.”

“Lawyers don't scare me,” Cindy said. “Why don't you both stick around? Then you'll see my evidence. Otherwise, wait until the six o'clock news.”

LaTisha made a face, then grabbed Mellie's arm and propelled her forward. They headed down the hallway.

“Why didn't you stay?” Mellie asked, tripping on her heels as she tried to keep up.

“Because we are on the cusp of a PR disaster,” LaTisha said, “and I could spend my time fruitlessly arguing with a woman whose career was going nowhere until this afternoon or I could find a way to protect us. I opt for protection.”

“Thanks,” Mellie said.

LaTisha frowned at her, and then pushed open the double doors leading outside. “I'm not going to ask you about this Encanto or this Bourke guy until we get somewhere private, but really, is your stepdaughter named White-Levanger?”

Mellie looked at LaTisha. “White's her maiden name,” Mellie said.

“You've got to be kidding me,” LaTisha said and hustled her to the nearest cab.

The portal dumped Charming, Imperia, and Grace in the reception room of Charming's attorney's office.

The building was squat and made of stone. It had stood in this site for more than a thousand years and had once been a wine cellar and a dungeon. It had windows, but only because someone—about five hundred years ago—had pushed out a few of the giant round stones that made up the wall and had glassed in the front. To see out, you'd have to crawl into the circular opening, something Charming couldn't do (his shoulders were too wide) but Grace or Imperia could if they were so inclined.

He had no idea why they would be so inclined. Despite the fact that the janitorial staff scrubbed the walls nightly, they still had a coating of moss. Water dripped through them, making the entire place smell slightly damp.

It was also chilly—the kind of chilly that caves deep underground got. Some trees grew in the interior—the reception desk was made out of one of the larger fallen branches—and they used that water to thrive. Their trunks went through the roof in several places and their canopies hid the building from any inquisitive visitors.

To come to this office, you had to know it was here.

Attorneys in the Kingdoms were great scholars and even greater magicians, able to use words and spells to sway judges and peers, which was what the juries were called here. Often cases got adjudicated in front of the greatest local authority—the King, in the case of the Third Kingdom, where Charming lived.

The last thing Charming wanted to do was go in front of his father.

Charming's attorney had the largest client list in the Third Kingdom. She often didn't have time for someone who dropped in unannounced.

Charming hoped today would be different.

He led the girls up to the reception desk. Grace was clinging to his hand so tightly that she cut off the circulation. He wanted to comfort her, but he couldn't let go of Imperia's hand. It was trembling ever so slightly, but he knew if he mentioned that to Imperia, she would pretend everything was just fine.

Fortunately, the receptionist was someone Charming knew. William the Younger, he was called, even though he was an only child. But he had gotten the name as the apprentice to Charming's valet, also named William, back when everyone thought William the Younger had no magic. Turned out he had an organizational magic, one that was more geared to legal niceties than to the proper way to thread a needle.

He smiled at the girls. They smiled back.

It bothered Charming that he had come to this office so often that his girls liked the receptionist.

“Is Gustava in?” he asked.

“You caught her between cases,” William said. “I trust this is important?”

“Urgent,” Charming said.

“Then go in.”

“I need to leave the girls out here,” he said. No way was he going to let them overhear what their mother had done this time. “But they need to be watched at all times.”

“Da-a-ad!” Somehow Imperia had made that word three syllables. Three upset syllables.

“Not because of you, baby,” Charming said. “It's just a bad day, and I want to make sure you girls are being taken care of.”

Grace hadn't let go of his hand. “Can I come with you?” she asked quietly.

Usually that tone, so serious and so needy, had a lot of sway with him, maybe too much. But not today.

“William will keep an eye on you,” Charming said gently. “Fortunately, you brought your book.”

“I didn't,” Imperia said.

“We have plenty to read,” William said. “I even have a rather fascinating history of the Third Kingdom somewhere around here….”

Charming left him searching for the book—which Imperia would not like—and made his way down the snaky arched corridor to Gustava's office.

The damp smell faded here because Gustava kept a fire burning in the corridor's fireplace. The air smelled of wood smoke. She liked her office warm, and she hated the dampness so common to this part of the Kingdom, so she burned excess fuel just to keep herself comfortable.

And, unlike most people, she loathed the outdoors—and with good reason. It terrified her, and nothing she or anyone else did made that terror go away.

Charming knocked on the solid oak door, then pushed it open. It groaned as it moved, which he thought appropriate for a door that weighed more than Grace did.

Gustava's office was beautifully appointed, with another fireplace—this one better vented than the one in the corridor. A patchwork fur rug, made from the pelts of half a dozen animals, covered the area in front of the fireplace, and another decorated the area in front of the desk.

The office had no windows, but made up for the lack with grand paintings of other buildings, indoor scenes, and one rather gruesome oil of a raven being strangled by a beautiful woman.

On closer inspection, anyone would realize that the woman was a young version of Gustava herself, a gift from a grateful client years ago who wanted to free Gussie from the terrors that held her so deeply hostage.

She loved the painting, but it hadn't freed her. Charming doubted anything would.

When Gussie saw him, she got up from behind her desk and came around to give him a hug. She was almost as tall as he was, thin in an ascetic way, wearing scholar's robes. Her chin was long and pointed—a witch's chin, like those out of the wood etchings that used to accompany the early volumes of Grimms' fairy tales. Her nose was pointed as well. Even with those flaws, she had been a beauty when she was young, although never the beauty her stepsister had been.

It was Charming's fault that Gussie hid herself in these offices, Charming's fault that she was terrified to step outdoors. He hadn't realized the power of magic when he was young, and he told the wrong person—whom, he would never know—that Ella's stepsisters had treated her cruelly because they were jealous of her looks.

Her stepsisters had treated Ella badly, in the way of teenage girls, but not because they hated her looks, but because she made them feel intellectually inferior. She could read; they couldn't. She had an education; they didn't. She had known and loved her father; they had never known theirs.

Charming hadn't known that his careless comment to a handful of unknown people would result in an event that marred his wedding and (he privately thought) tainted his marriage forever.

Songbirds—dozens of them—carried Ella's veil, lifted her train, and sang as she walked down the aisle. But the crows and ravens, jealous of the songbirds' special place in the ceremony, had attacked Ella's stepsisters, plucking out their eyes.

He could still hear the screams. Initially he thought it all caused by some kind of bird magic. Only later did he learn that birds had to be spelled by a human to behave in that way—from the songbirds to the ravens—and he never found out who.

But he did discover that the stepsisters were falsely accused. He had hired a wise woman to reverse the spell. When she couldn't, she did her best, along with a healer, to give the sisters back their sight.

Gussie's sister had refused the gift, saying she found comfort in darkness. But Gussie took it, and then used that sight to study law, so that the perpetrator of that crime against her—whoever it might be—would eventually be punished in a proper and fair way, not in a magical violent way.

Charming had supported her in her studies, although Ella never approved. Gussie and Charming started up a true friendship, and when his old lawyer retired shortly after Charming's divorce, Gussie had taken him on as a client. She had helped him establish his Kingdom bookstore in a way that would prevent his father from having control, and she enabled Charming to emancipate himself from his family in other ways, mostly protecting his girls from his father's all-powerful touch.

Gussie felt fragile in his arms, her bones brittle. And as she stepped back, he could see the scars around her eyes, scars she never had covered over with any sort of magic, although she did wear stylish glasses that made the scars seem more like a fashion choice than a horrible, disfiguring accident.

“I take it this isn't a social visit,” she said.

“That's right.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the parchment. He started to hand it to her, but she put her hands up.

“Put it on the desk,” she said.

He did, in between leather-bound books so old that they were written in the Kingdom's first language. Gussie went behind the desk and took out tweezers, pulling the document toward her without touching it.

“Did I do something wrong in handling it?” he asked, not quite able to keep the fright from his voice.

She stared at it. “You're part of the document. It needs you.”

She spoke almost absently, as if she wasn't really paying a lot of attention to him.

“Where did you get this?” she asked after a moment.

“Ella brought it to my store in the Greater World,” he said.

She raised her head, her mouth a thin line. “No.”

He nodded.

She bit her lower lip, looking younger than she was. “And the girls?”

“In with William,” he said.

“Good.” She looked down and studied the document for a long time.

He made himself stand still, his worry growing the longer she stared at that bit of parchment.

Finally, he couldn't take the silence any longer. “It'll negate itself, right? It's got a time limit.”

“It should,” she said. “But I think we need to neutralize it.”

“Because it tries to undo my girls, doesn't it?”

She looked up, her expression so sad that his heart twisted. “I was trying to figure out how to tell you that. I forgot how smart you are on legal matters.”

He grimaced. “I'm just a worst-case scenario kinda guy.”

“Thank everything magical that you are,” she said. “Your caution stopped this entire part of our world from unraveling.”

She moved the parchment aside with the tweezers, then set those in a lead-lined box as if touching the document had contaminated them.

“I'm going to have to unspell this line by line,” she said, “and search for more hidden meanings. It'll take time to undo.”

“And my girls?” he asked.

“Should be fine, so long as you never sign this document.”

“I wouldn't,” he said.

“But I can't guarantee what else she'll try.” Gussie pushed up her glasses with the knuckle of her index finger. “I knew Ella was unhappy, but this—this is serious stuff. This is nasty magic, the kind that I thought she had forsworn.”

“Forsworn?” he asked.

Gussie sighed. “I thought, maybe, she was behind the attack at the wedding. I made her swear she would never use magic to harm again.”

Charming's breath caught. “Was she behind it?”

“She said no. I wasn't in the mood to trust her. But she did seem happy with you then, and that kind of magic isn't the act of a happy person.”

Charming nodded. “I never thought she was vindictive. Just self-centered. This could be interpreted as self-centered.”

“Or,” Gussie said softly, “it could be something else.”

He looked at her.

“She would have had to pay someone to do this spell. And maybe that someone took advantage of her, thinking it might harm the entire royal family to lose the girls.”

“I hadn't thought of that,” Charming said.

“Whoever did this spell,” Gussie said, “had powers well beyond the average magic user here in the Kingdoms. This is one powerful person, and one twisted person. The best thing you can do is find out who Ella got to create the document.”

“I doubt I'll ever talk to her again,” he said. “She really wants nothing to do with the three of us. Ever. She wishes we did not exist.”

Gussie blinked as if the thought hurt her. “Then the document would do that job, but in a way that might have even harmed Ella. Undoing the fabric of the world around us is a dangerous spell, one that can have side effects none of us understand.”

“So someone is using Ella to get to my family,” he said.

“Ella is part of your family,” Gussie said, “whether you like it or not.”

“And yours,” he said.

“Yes,” Gussie said dryly. “Only I'm not required to interact with her. You are.”

“Not anymore,” he said. “We agreed that I'd raise the girls and she wouldn't have to see them again if she didn't want to.”

“You agreed to that?”

“My choice was between that or this damn document,” he said. “Which do you think I'd chose?”

Gussie leaned back. He realized just how much vehemently he had spoken.

“Is there any way to protect my girls? I'm terrified to let them leave my sight.”

“That seems practical at the moment,” Gussie said.

“It's not,” he said. “We're building a life in the Greater World. They have school and friends on their own. They can't be with me all the time.”

“For the next few days or so, keep them at your side,” Gussie said. “By then, I'll know how dangerous Ella's friends are.”

“I think we can handle a week,” he said. “But I have no way to fight serious magic. What if someone comes after us?”

“I can give you a protection spell,” Gussie said. “I'll recite it over the three of you. But it'll only protect you against Ella and anyone sent by her. Do you understand?”

“If someone comes after us with a Greater World weapon, the protection spell won't work,” he said.

“Unless Ella asked them to come after you,” Gussie said.

“So if I know who is threatening my family, I can have you whip up another protection spell?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “But it's best if you don't investigate. Let me. You keep an eye on your girls. Get them out of the Kingdoms, because magic is stronger here. And I'll contact you as soon as I've neutralized the document.”