Chapter 33

The moment Charming stepped into the reception area of Gussie’s office, his phone started vibrating. He kept it in his breast pocket, and the vibration was startling. He had forgotten that Gussie’s office was a magic-free zone.

Still, he didn’t look at the screen right away. Instead, he scanned for his daughters.

Grace sat on the sofa against the wall, legs curled under her, reading her book. She didn’t look up as he came in, so she really was reading.

Imperia, on the other hand, glanced at him immediately. She was surrounded by books, most of which looked older than he was. On her regal face, he saw a mixture of expressions—impatient teenager and terrified little girl.

He gave her a reassuring smile.

William the Younger was digging through a box in the back of the room. He held up a few more books. “How about History of the Fates and the Magical World,” he said. “Or The Law, the Fates, and Magic?”

“It’s okay,” Imperia said. “My dad is here.”

Grace still didn’t look up, but she turned the page. She was lost in the story. His girl.

Charming glanced at his phone and was startled to see that he had missed fifteen text messages and twenty phone calls.

His heart twisted.

“Just give me a minute,” he said, and stepped outside.

Outside was a dense forest, dark and gloomy. The tree canopies, which mostly hid Gussie’s office, touched the ground here, giving everything the scent of green leaves. That was the plus side. The downside was the preponderance of moss, which made his Greater World dress shoes slip with each step.

He stood just outside the door, and listened to the drip, drip, drip of rain through the leaves. He didn’t mind getting wet. The leaves protected him from the worst of it.

He looked at the texts first, mostly because he knew that people who couldn’t reach him by phone often sent their messages by text.

All of the messages were from Mellie. The first was upbeat—she had great news. But the rest got increasingly desperate:

Need to talk

Where are you? Call me right away.

Call me.

CALL ME.

She took to leaving her phone number, as if he didn’t already know it. The missed calls were from her as well—all of them, even though she only left two voice mails. He listened to the first:

Terrible interview today, she said. My publicist thinks this is the beginning of the end. Maybe it’ll destroy the book. Please call.

He frowned, then listened to the second.

I sent you a link in your email, she said. Please watch it, then call.

He opened his email program, not sure it would work in the Kingdoms. He didn’t get any mail except Mellie’s. Briefly he wondered how the program could know who was a Kingdom native and who wasn’t.

Then he remembered it was magic, which was answer enough.

He clicked on the link, which took him to a video on a Boston TV station’s website.

Two generic anchors sat side by side—the square-jawed middle-aged male anchor, and a perky young female anchor. Off to the side, sat a middle-aged woman with helmet hair, who looked like she had once been a perky young female anchor.

“I hear you had a surprising interaction today, Cindy,” the male anchor said.

“I did,” said Miss Helmet Hair, sounding as scripted as she probably was. “You’ve all heard of the stepmother blockbuster, Evil, by now. If you haven’t, then you’ve been living under a rock. Its so-called author has been touting it on various shows and appearances all over the country.”

Charming’s breath caught at “so-called author.”

He listened to the rest of the report in disbelief. It was a long segment, maybe eight minutes. Helmet Hair had an interview with the odious Dave Bourke, done “with thanks to our Los Angeles affiliate,” where Bourke sat like a victorious toad, telling the world that Mellie didn’t write the book.

“She can’t write,” Bourke said. “I read what she put on the page. She doesn’t know grammar or how to spell. Worst of all, she has no sense of story. When I saw her last, she was searching for a ghost writer, and she clearly found one. There’s no way this woman could have written her way out of a paper bag.”

“Neither can you,” Charming whispered to the image on his phone.

“I understand she asked you to write the book,” Helmet Hair said.

“Actually, she wanted me to write a screenplay. But when I told her that most screenplays don’t get produced, and showed her the excellent screenplays I’d already written that hadn’t yet been made into films, she got discouraged. She asked me if I could write a book, and I told her that I was a macho guy who couldn’t get the female perspective right—no real man could—”

Charming rolled his eyes at the dig.

“—and gave her information on classes to take to learn how to write. But no one learns that fast, especially when they’re not a reader. And she made no bones about the fact that she didn’t read books.”

“Not only that,” Helmet Hair said in her voice over, “but she also doesn’t write them. Her stepdaughter, the much maligned Essy White-Levanger, says her stepmother hired a man known for shady dealings, a shadowy man known as David Encanto, to write the book for her and to keep that work a secret.”

The film cut to a sad-eyed woman with hair so raven-black that the streak of white along one side looked like an affectation. Worse, it made her look like the prototype for Cruella de Vil.

“Dave Encanto is a well-known ghost,” she said. “He had the ability to write that novel, not my stepmother. She’s a hideous woman who’ll stop at nothing to obtain fame and fortune.”

The report went on from there, with Helmet Hair saying that the publisher had been duped, that no one had heard of this Encanto, and that there was a possibility that Mellie had actually stolen the book from him.

Charges, unsubstantiated and salacious, filled the rest of the report.

And then they got to Mellie. Who, when she was asked if she wrote the book, vacillated between belligerent and dumbstruck.

It didn’t play well. All of her media skills had failed her there.

And some of that was his fault. She quoted the words he had given her when she asked what she should say if someone asked if she had written the book.

It’s my story.

Yeah, it was. But he wrote it.

And unless they figured out how to deal with the public relations nightmare, that one little fact might destroy everything they had worked toward.

Worse, it might make Mellie hate him. Forever.