Chapter 41

Charming had forgotten the benefits of staying at an upscale hotel. The concierge knew someone who could open a nearby department store early, so that Charming and the girls could get some clothes for this trip.

In these days of megamalls, Charming hadn’t realized there were still department stores. Then he took the girls into this one and realized it wasn’t what he remembered department stores to be.

This was an upscale name-brand store, something the average shopper couldn’t easily afford.

He could afford it, but he didn’t like shopping at these places, even when the clerks fawned all over him, as they were doing here. They expected to make some money—since they worked on commission—and they would, but not as much as they had hoped.

The store had clearly been in its location for a long time. It was made of brick, the kind he never saw on the West Coast. The interior smelled like cologne, disinfectant, and plastic. The men’s department covered half of an entire floor.

The girls sighed when he went to the men’s department first, but there was method to his madness. He knew his suit would need a bit of tailoring, and he knew a store like this could do it on the spot.

As he looked at the suits, his phone rang. He looked at the display and saw that the caller was Gussie. His stomach clenched. News, then, of some kind or another.

He held up a finger, like the mogul he was pretending to be, and walked out of menswear into men’s shoes. The area smelled like leather. The shoes on display glinted in the fluorescent lighting.

The girls followed him, but he shook his head.

“I need a minute alone,” he said to them.

Imperia frowned. Grace bit her upper lip.

“Find me something to wear,” he said. “I trust you.”

At least, he hoped he did. When the girls were out of earshot, he answered the phone.

“Hey, Gus,” he said.

“My,” she said, her voice sounding so close it seemed like she was sitting next to him. “You’re even starting to talk like you’re from the Greater World.”

He almost said, I am, but decided that would derail the conversation.

“You have news?” he asked.

“Tracked down Ella,” Gussie said. “Which wasn’t easy. You know she’s made friends with Snow White, right?”

“I hadn’t realized,” he said.

“Yeah, Ella’s the one who gave Snow your book, and Ella’s the one who told everyone that you wrote it. Your father’s not happy, by the way. He says writing is for monks and eunuchs and is worse than being a merchant.”

Charming looked at his girls. He hoped he would never be the kind of father to them that his father was to him.

“Clearly, my father and I disagree,” Charming said. “How did Ella hook up with Snow?”

“We’re still trying to figure that out. Something to do with fairy godmothers, we think.”

“We?” he asked.

“That investigator I told you about,” Gussie said. “We have some theories, but no proof.”

“Okay,” Charming said. “So what’s the headline?”

“You do talk like them,” Gussie said.

Across the aisle Grace held up a grape-colored suit, and pointed at it, meeting his gaze. Charming did everything he could not to wince. Instead he shook his head with a rueful smile.

“The ‘headline,’ as you so quaintly put it,” Gussie said, “is that Ella is not your problem any longer.”

He sat up straight, his heart pounding. “How can that be?” he asked, afraid she had died or something.

“She’s moved out of the Third Kingdom,” Gussie said. “She’s starting over in the Sixth Kingdom, and not calling herself Ella anymore. In fact, she tells people she never married and is childless.”

He sighed. He wasn’t going to tell his girls that either. “That’s fast. She just left the Greater World yesterday.”

Although it felt like a week ago to him.

“She was going back to the Sixth Kingdom. She’d been staying there since she abandoned the girls. You, by the way, didn’t tell me she had abandoned the girls. I had to find that out on my own.”

“Sorry,” he said.

“Eh.” Gussie made a dismissive noise, more interested in her news. “Apparently someone told Ella she could make her lies about being single and childless come true. But you thwarted that. She’s not going to try anything, Charming. She wants nothing to do with any of us.”

He hunched over and said as softly as he could, “Would you bet the lives of my girls on that?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact,” Gussie said. “You have my protective spell, and I had a few other spells placed around the three of you for good measure. You’ll be fine. All of you. Of course, the upshot of the spells is that Ella can’t contact any of you, ever, but I figure if she wants to, she’ll talk to Mother.”

Mother, in Gussie’s case, being Lavinia. And the chances of Ella talking to Lavinia were pretty slim.

Ella was out of his girls’ lives, and by definition, out of his.

He waited, expecting to feel something—a wave of loss, and grief. Instead, he just felt sadness that his girls lost their mother.

Or rather, lost the idea of their mother. They had never had the kind of mother they deserved.

“I’ll let you know if there are any updates,” Gussie said. “I don’t expect any. But then, I’ve never been one for keeping an eye on Ella.”

“But your investigator will?”

“Oh, yeah,” Gussie said. “We have alerts set all over the Kingdoms. We’ll hear if she goes off the deep end again.”

“Thanks, Gus,” he said.

“Don’t thank me until you see the bill,” she said, laughed, and hung up.

He sat for a moment on the chair, one foot resting on the stool the salesman usually sat on. Charming clutched the phone in his left hand, and bowed his head.

His marriage was officially over, his wife gone. The fear he’d had, just hours ago, dissipated.

He looked at his girls, so lovely as they thumbed through the racks of men’s suits. Those girls were one hundred percent his now. His responsibility. If they turned out badly, it would be on him. If they turned out well, it would be on him too.

And now he’d have to deal with the loss of their mother, which would be tough, because she hadn’t died. But the net effect was the same. She was gone from their lives forever.

He wished he could speak to Mellie. Mellie understood children. He didn’t. Mellie would know how to raise them, how to soften the blow.

Mellie would know what to tell the girls and what to leave out.

Imperia held up a dove-gray suit. It wasn’t a color he would normally wear, but even from here, the suit looked regal. Leave it to Imp to find something offbeat but beautiful.

He smiled at her, a real smile, and stood. Then he tucked the phone in his pocket and made his way to the girls.

“Who was that?” Imperia asked, clutching the suit to her chest.

“Gussie,” he said.

“Is it about yesterday?” Imperia asked.

Charming nodded. He waited for her to ask about her mother, but she didn’t.

“Everything’s okay now,” he said.

“Except the stuff with your friend here in Boston,” Imperia said with a bite to her voice.

“I hope we’ll solve that this afternoon,” he said. “In New York.”

He looked at the salesman, who held up a pale silver-blue shirt, a black silk tie and a matching pocket handkerchief. It all went with the suit, and none of it was something Charming would have picked out for himself.

But he had said he trusted his daughters, so he tried the outfit on. The suit made him look slimmer. The shirt and tie, with the matching pocket handkerchief, made him look stylish.

He touched his hair, feeling good for the first time in months. He would like to have blamed that on the suit, but he had a hunch it had more to do with Mellie and the night they spent together.

Or the time they spent together. She had left long before the night was over.

He smiled to himself, thinking of her. She would never leave children, like Ella did. In fact, Mellie had suffered a lot for her children and her stepchildren, including the damaged reputation.

It took a lot of strength not to defend herself against all the charges that people in the Second Kingdom had leveled against her. She had never told anyone that she had burned up her magic saving Snow’s life.

Which was probably the best decision, given what people thought of her. So many people wouldn’t have believed her, even though the magic proved that she hadn’t lied.

Only powerful good magic drained like that. Evil magic fed on itself, twisting and perverting the user. But Mellie had sent her magic away, using it to prop up Snow, until someone could find a way to give her back her life.

But that wouldn’t give Mellie her magic back. She had to wait for that well to refill, and it might take another hundred years.

He closed his eyes for just a moment, as he realized what was going on. He was falling in love with Mellie.

Or maybe he had already fallen.

He just wasn’t sure when.

He came out of the changing room. His girls ooed and ahhed. The suit needed hemming. The salesman measured, and promised to have the light tailoring done within the hour.

Once the measuring was finished and he had changed back into his own clothes, he took his daughters to the girls’ department. He bought (exceedingly expensive) underwear and (slightly less expensive) socks. Then let the girls each pick out two outfits. Grace wanted a nightshirt as well, but he told her that she was going to sleep in her T-shirt for this trip.

He had them change into the dressier of their new outfits in the changing room. Even though the girls hadn’t wanted dressy outfits (“Dad, we’re traveling,” Imperia said), he insisted, since they had to accompany him to Mellie’s publishing company in the afternoon.

Fortunately for all of them that meeting was after lunch, which gave him time to finish up here and catch a train to New York. He was pushing the timing, but he hoped it would all work out.

Grace came out first, wearing a short-sleeved pink tunic over a matching pair of pants. The entire outfit made her look older than she was, which tore at Charming’s heart.

He almost told her to put the clothes back, but the clerk beside him gasped.

“What a beautiful little girl you have, sir,” she said softly.

Grace smiled, her entire face lighting up. “Me?” she asked.

“Of course, you,” the clerk said. “You’re stunning.”

Grace loved the compliment. Usually people called Imperia beautiful and Grace sweet. He’d never be able to get her to buy something else now.

“C’mere, beautiful,” he said.

Grace came up beside him and slipped her hand in his.

“Where’s your book?” he asked.

“Imp has it,” she said.

“Okay.”

While they waited for Imperia, he paid for the clothes. He spent more than he had planned to.

As the clerk bagged the last item, Imperia came out of the dressing room. She wore a pale blue short-sleeved jacket over a pair of blue pants. Her shirt was black with a slogan written across it.

That’s Imperial Princess to you, Buddy.

She had found the shirt and loved it. He loved it too. It looked like it had been made for her. But he had warned her it was too casual for the afternoon. Only she had found a way to dress it up.

His Imperia was going to be a fashion maven as she got older.

“Wow,” he said.

“That’s striking,” the clerk said, and Charming was absurdly grateful she hadn’t told Imperia she was beautiful too. He didn’t want Grace to lose the joy she had in that compliment.

“Thanks,” Imperia said, nodding and heading toward her father.

She carried a shopping bag filled with their clothes. Grace opened it, and made certain her book was inside.

“I told you I’d bring it,” Imperia snapped.

“Imp,” Charming said, a warning in his voice.

“I did,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “She was just making sure. I told her to.”

Imperia glared at him, but she didn’t flounce off. She waited as he thanked the children’s wear clerk for coming in early.

Then he took the girls back down to menswear. As they rode the escalator, he turned to Imperia.

“What’s bothering you this morning?” he asked, expecting a litany about showers, breakfast, and being away from home.

“That woman,” Imperia said.

He wondered what the clerk had done, and he hoped it wasn’t calling Grace beautiful.

“Which one?” he said, hoping to steer the conversation away from clothes.

“The one who came to our room last night.”

Charming stiffened. He had thought the girls were asleep.

“She’s the woman you wrote the book for, right?” Imperia asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“I didn’t know she was pretty,” Imperia said.

Charming smiled. “She is, isn’t she?”

They reached the bottom of the escalator.

“She’s just using magic to make herself look pretty,” Imperia said. “She’s really an ugly old hag underneath.”

Then she flounced away, heading toward menswear.

“Is that true?” Grace asked.

“No, honey,” Charming said. “Mellie doesn’t have magic anymore.”

“How come?” Grace asked.

“I think she used it all up.” He took her hand and followed Imperia to the menswear section. “I thought you guys slept through the whole night.”

“I did,” Grace said. “Imp spied on you guys.”

Great, Charming thought. Just great.

“Did she tell you what she saw?”

“She said you had breakfast in the middle of the night.”

“We did,” Charming said, worrying that Imperia had seen the prelude to breakfast.

“The smell woke her up,” Grace said. “It didn’t wake me up. I was tired.”

Charming nodded. If breakfast woke up Imperia, then she saw nothing untoward. And more importantly, she didn’t hear what her mother had done.

Grace frowned. “Imp said that woman is an evil stepmother. Is that true?”

He sighed. “That’s what I wrote the book about. Mellie’s not really evil.”

“Like Gramma Lavinia?” Grace asked.

“Like Gramma Lavinia,” Charming said, silently thanking the gods for his understanding youngest daughter.

They reached the menswear section. Imperia was waiting for them near the ties, pretending interest in the gaudiest of them.

He wanted to ask her right then and there what she saw, but he didn’t dare. The other clerk came over with Charming’s newly adjusted suit.

“I’ll be right back,” he told his girls. “You wait just outside this door.”

He went into the changing area. He could see their feet through the opening at the bottom of the booth.

He changed in a hurry, his mind working overtime, worrying about what Imperia overheard. Clearly it all upset her.

He just wasn’t sure what he could do about any of it.

He came out, feeling like a certified grown-up in expensive grown-up clothes. He had grown-up problems too.

He bought one more item—a small rolling suitcase—and packed their other clothes inside.

Then he led the girls to the train station, so that they could catch the express to New York.