Absolutely Captivated

by Grayson, Kristine

  The problem was the distractions. The glittery signs advertising Celine Dion at Caesar’s Palace, Siegfried and Roy at the Mirage, and the Blue Man Group at the Luxor fairly screamed for attention from the side of the road. More hotels, some looking like European palaces, rose up to the right, and to the left, shops and hotels, and houses that shimmered like a heat mirage in the desert air.

  A neon sign for a bank Travers had never heard of kindly informed him that it was 105 degrees—not normally a problem for him (he was a native Angelino, after all)—but in this condition, with these women in his car, his quiet son beside him, and in this city where he didn’t know anyone, it was simply one more irritation.

  And he was sitting in the sun, unable to turn until I-15 became I-515 in a few more miles.

  Not to mention the fact that his plans were shot. He had planned to leave early enough to make the drive—both ways—in one day. That way, Travers wouldn’t miss any more work, and Kyle would be home in time to register for the month-long summer session at his school.

  Travers wondered if this weren’t all a plot. After all, Kyle had mentioned the Wyrd Sisters and the Star Trek Experience nearly a week ago. All the way here, he was reading travel guides like they were the Bible.

  The approach to 515 came up faster than Travers expected. Somehow he had gotten it into his head that Las Vegas was the same size as L.A. Nothing in North America was the same size as L.A. Maybe in population, but not in sheer sprawl.

  He whipped the SUV into the correct lane, making his passengers gasp, and then, on two wheels, somehow managed to slide in front of a very large truck without anyone hitting the brakes.

  Travers turned on 515, and told Kyle to watch for Las Vegas Boulevard South, which would take them to Fremont Street. The signs were telling Travers that he was heading toward Downtown Vegas and the Fremont Street Experience, whatever that was. Apparently everything in Vegas was an experience.

  The women were chattering behind him, but thanks to Charlie Pride (Wow! A station that played Charlie Pride couldn’t be all bad), Travers couldn’t hear what they were saying. He didn’t really want to know, anyway.

  His plans were pretty simple. He would escort them into the private detective agency, make sure this Zanthia/Zoe Sinclair actually existed, and then walk back out, leaving her with the most naïve group of women Travers had ever met in his life.

  Then he would find a hotel for him and Kyle, maybe one close to this Star Trek thing—if it was for kids and not for adults. (Travers had his doubts.) They would do whatever an eleven-year-old and a grown-up could do on a weeknight in Las Vegas, and then, in the morning, they would drive home and return to their normal, everyday Wyrd-Sisters-free life.

  The turn onto Las Vegas Boulevard put the sun directly in Travers’ eyes. He swerved slightly to avoid something shiny in the road, then made the relative quick turn onto Fremont.

  At that moment, his complacency ended.

  Everything he had imagined about Las Vegas—everything he had feared—was right here in front of him. Women in short skirts, fishnets (how clichéd was that?), and teased hair walked the streets, eyeing the cars. A drug deal was clearly going down on the corner, and a group of young men walked in a pack toward a parked car.

  “Oh, Dad,” Kyle said. “This isn’t good.”

  “No kidding,” Travers said. Maybe the neighborhood would clean up closer to the detective’s agency.

  In L.A., neighborhoods sometimes changed quality from block to block.

  “How much farther we got to go, Kyle?” Travers asked.

  “Not much,” Kyle said, squeezing the Internet map so hard that the paper he’d printed it on made rustly sounds of protest.

  Well, this was a twist. And once he reached the address, Travers would have to determine the best course of action besides the one he really wanted to take.

  He really wanted to dump the Wyrd Sisters onto the sidewalk and run.

  But he wasn’t that kind of guy, as Kyle kept reminding him. And Travers had already brought them this far.

  He might as well finish the trip.

  Five

  Zoe Sinclair took a washcloth from the cupboard above the sink in the extremely small private bathroom next to her office. She turned the water on cold, and listened as it clanged through the rusty pipes.

  Never again. Never again would she try to find someone’s familiar. That damn dachshund had led her around all of Vegas before Zoe finally figured out how to trap the obnoxious little creature.

  Sausages. She bought lots and lots of sausages, created a trail from the dachshund’s last known site, and baited a trap. Only she couldn’t use a real trap on a familiar (rules, rules, rules—Zoe was nothing if not diligent about following the Fates’ rules), so she had to catch the thing herself.

  That little dog snapped and snarled and bit, its teeth as sharp as any real dog’s teeth—not that a familiar wasn’t a real dog. It was a real dog with a little something extra—the ability to enhance magic, to make it purer, better, stronger.

  Zoe ran the cloth under the ice-cold water, letting the chill run through her fingers and up her arms. The sensation—cold hands and sweat-covered, exhausted body—was becoming her Vegas norm, particularly this summer with her air-conditioning working at half-capacity.

  She’d already tried to fix it herself—she had even used a spell—but the magical fix only lasted so long. The building’s manager had already called to complain that the other tenants were getting upset.

  Zoe was the building’s secret owner, and the only reason she wasn’t fixing the air was a simple one: it required redoing the entire system. She would have to put in a modern air-conditioning unit, which meant redoing the duct work, which meant knocking out a few walls, which meant having a mold inspection, which meant having an inspection—and this building was not up to any outside investigation.

  Zoe had owned the place (under a corporate name) since 1953, and while she had made upgrades, she knew that the building itself was probably only one step above condemned. The way Vegas property values were going, she was better off tearing the place down and building new than going through the hassles of inspections, repairs, and remodeling.

  She wiped the cloth on her face, then wrapped the cold wetness against the back of her neck. A shudder ran through her. A delicious shudder, brought on by the chill.

  She shut off the tap, staggered back into the main part of her office, and closed the blinds against the sun, which was beginning its descent in the western sky.

  Normally, she would have a long night ahead of her—she still needed some surveillance photographs on that divorce case—but she deserved an evening off. Anyone would, after cradling that smelly, rebellious little dachshund in her arms for the better part of an hour.

  The dog had been living in garbage cans and rolling in whatever horrible smell it could find. The dachshund had clearly reveled in just being a dog, rather than in being a familiar. She probably would too, considering that the dog belonged to a minor entertainer on the Strip, known for his shady business practices and his willingness to look the other way whenever something illegal happened nearby.

  Zoe had compromised. She’d found the dachshund, but it was clear the dog didn’t want to return to its familiar duties. So, after the entertainer had paid her for her time, she had sent both of them to the Fates to have the Fates decide if the poor dog had to continue in its servitude to a magician who wasn’t really worth anyone’s time.

  Zoe took the cloth off the back of her neck, wiped down her arms, then tossed the cloth into the bathroom. She turned back toward the main part of her office.

  It looked like every gumshoe’s office in every bad detective movie. Walls that needed painting forty years ago. A trenchcoat hanging off a coat tree beside the door. Rows and rows of filing cabinets filled with long-closed cases. A ratty couch against one wall, two ancient chairs in front of an old oak desk that had once belonged to a successful mob lawyer.

  She even ha
d a black rotary phone on the desktop, although the phone wasn’t her primary source of communication anymore. For that, she used her cell, just like everyone else in America.

  And she ruined the good-old-fashioned detective look by having three computers in the main room. One, a modern iMac, sat on her desktop. Another, a Dell, sat on the shelf she had built in front of the window. She used that Dell as her Internet computer, figuring she wanted to keep her P.I. files separate.

  Then she had a laptop in a carrying case on the floor beside her desk. The laptop was only for travel and reports, and she never kept her files on it, knowing how easy it was for someone to break in, get the machine, and compromise it.

  Of course, she was old-fashioned enough to prefer hard copy. And she had piles of that, also on her desktop. Three stacks of half-completed cases lined the far left, like a barrier against the light from the shuttered window.

  Sometimes she thought Herschel and Gaylord were right; sometimes she thought she should just live off her magic. Make a few dollars off the tourists and retire to her home near the university. The impulse that had brought her to this job, at this time, faded when she was doing glamour work like leaving sausages out for on-the-lam dogs, and hiding in her car outside cheap motels, taking pictures of two people who should never be anywhere near an open window when naked.

  When she’d first started as a detective eighty years ago, it hadn’t been a glamour job, but it had been a necessary one. In those days, she had only taken female clients, and had helped them with all the things that their husbands got easily. Then the divorce cases had had meaning because in those days, without proof, the judgment always favored the man.

  Women often got accused of crimes when they hadn’t committed any, and got the shaft in court cases because they didn’t have as many rights as men. Zoe had been on fire then, and it had carried her through her Los Angeles days.

  She had come to Vegas in the heyday of the mob, figuring there’d be a lot of underdogs here too, and she found them. She was one of the few private detectives who wasn’t afraid to take on gangsters, mostly because she knew she could win.

  But gradually Vegas changed and so did she. Not only had the mob left, but the magical moved in, and one by one, they found her. She was doing all kinds of jobs like finding familiars, recouping losses created by the Faeries, and hiding magical misdemeanors so that the Fates wouldn’t find out and imprison some poor sap for two centuries for a simple act of kindness toward a mortal.

  Zoe walked over to her desk, opened the bottom drawer, and pulled out her purse and her car keys. She would order take-out from P.F. Chang’s, pick it up on the way home, and watch some trashy movie while she soaked the dog bite on her arm.

  Then she’d read the latest Nora Roberts—the only writer she bought in hardback (and yet she felt the urge to hide the novels, because reading about romance hurt her own tough mental image of herself. But she felt if she couldn’t have the real thing, then fictional form would have to do). A book, some ice cream—and oh, yes, a long, hot bath.

  The perfect evening for the working woman, alone with her thoughts.

  She had stepped around the desk, looking for the sneakers she had pulled off when she had returned to the office, when someone knocked on the door.

  She glanced up. Behind the frosted glass, she saw several shapes. She also got a sense of magic—faint, but present. Her heart pounded. Usually the magical called first. In fact, most of her clients came by e-mail or by phone these days.

  Zoe considered not saying a word, but even as she did, the doorknob turned. A man poked his head in and smiled at her.

  He had the most gorgeous smile she had ever seen.

  “Excuse me,” he said, “but where can I find Zoe Sinclair?”

  It took Zoe a moment to process the words. She wasn’t usually susceptible to male beauty, but this guy was incredible. He had wheat-blond hair—a color most people usually lost when they left childhood. His eyes were the deep blue of topaz neon. His tanned face had classic features—an aquiline nose, high cheekbones, square jaw—and just to to make things interesting, he had a smile line on his right cheek, but not his left.

  The asymmetry saved him from perfection and made him arresting.

  “I’m Zoe Sinclair,” she said.

  He shook his head.

  “You may be a Zoe Sinclair,” he said, “but you’re not the one we’re looking for. She’s a detective. Has to be in her—gosh, I don’t know—eighties by now?”

  Zoe felt cold. Mages weren’t supposed to use the same name from place to place, unless they thought they were untraceable. She had been using Zoe Sinclair since 1900, and no one had ever connected the Zoe Sinclair of those early days to her.

  In fact, no one in Vegas had ever asked why her detective agency had been in business under the name of Zoe Sinclair since the mid-1950s. Vegas was such a transient town that no one had ever noticed before.

  “Perhaps you’d better come in, Mr.—?”

  “Kinneally,” he said, stepping inside the door. He had a long, lanky build—a basketball player’s frame—with broad shoulders and just the right amount of height. He accented that with a white polo shirt over khaki pants. No shorts for this man, even though the temperature outside had to be 115 on the concrete. His only concession to the weather were sandals, and they revealed bony, square, sexy feet.

  Zoe had never found feet sexy before either.

  She put a hand to her cheek to cool herself off.

  As Mr. Kinneally stepped inside, four other people followed him. Three women, beautiful enough to be actresses, and a young boy who wasn’t more than twelve. The women looked familiar, but they didn’t give off the hint of magic.

  That came from Kinneally himself, and from the boy. The boy’s magical vibe was a strong one that suggested he had already come into some of his powers, even though mages generally didn’t manifest until the hormone surges were mostly passed—twenty-one for males and after menopause for women.

  Zoe had been lucky in that; she went through menopause in her mid-thirties, a long, long time ago.

  Kinneally stayed by the door, snicking it shut after his companions entered.

  “She is lying,” said the blond woman. “This is Zoe Sinclair.”

  Zoe frowned slightly. She had met this woman, but she couldn’t place her. And that was unusual for Zoe, who usually recalled everyone she had come across.

  The woman had delicate features. She wore a diaphanous pink sundress that fell to her knees, and she looked as cool as a woman at an ice hockey game.

  The other two women also looked comfortable. The one in the middle was a redhead without the freckled skin. She was big-boned and solid, like the Greek sculptures of the gods on display at the Louvre. Her dress was a solid emerald green that made her skin glow.

  The third woman was tall and so slender that she looked like she might break in half if grabbed wrong. Her black hair had brown highlights, and her strong features made her look exotic. Her dress was white, showing off her dark skin, and reminded Zoe of a toga.

  A sense of the women’s identity rose, and then faded as the second woman said, “See? She does not deny it.”

  “Deny what?” Zoe said, wondering how she had already lost the thread of the conversation.

  “That you are Zoe Sinclair,” said the third woman.

  “I am Zoe Sinclair,” Zoe said, wondering whether Candid Camera had been revived for the fourth time. “I never denied that.”

  “I said she couldn’t be,” Kinneally said from his post near the door. “She’s too young.”

  “Posh,” the first woman said, grabbing the nearest chair and sitting down. “Ignore him. He knows nothing.”

  The woman acted as if she and Zoe were old friends. The redhead took the other chair, and the black-haired woman stood behind them.

  The three of them were clearly a set.

  The boy stood near Kinneally. They looked like brothers. When he got contacts and lost some of his bab
y fat, the boy would look just like the man beside him.

  “What’s this about?” Zoe asked, trying to regain control of her office.

  “Dear, I don’t suppose you’ve been tied into the politics at Mount Olympus lately,” the redhead said.

  Zoe blinked, looked at Kinneally, and then back at the women. There were a hundred ways she could play this and none of them made sense. Technically, she was supposed to deny the existence of the mage ruling council, but Mount Olympus did have some meaning to mortals as well.

  And for all Zoe knew, Mount Olympus could be a new casino concept from the desk of the ubiquitous Steve Wynn, who had come up with the Mirage and half the other “wonders” of Las Vegas Boulevard.

  “Um, no, I haven’t,” Zoe said, deciding that letting her visitors talk was the best policy.

  “Oh, by the Powers, where do we start?” the brunette asked.

  But as she said “Powers,” all three women bowed their heads and spread their arms out in obeisance.

  Zoe hadn’t seen anyone do that since the last time she visited the Fates, nearly a hundred years ago.

  Then she leaned back in her chair, so shocked that she gasped. These women looked like the Fates. Only they couldn’t be. The Fates had more magical ability than all the other mages combined. And these women had none.

  They had walked in. They looked like normal people and they weren’t toying with their appearance all the time the way they used to.

  And they had walked in. To Zoe’s office. In Las Vegas. In Modern America. On Earth.

  The Fates never appeared outside the magical realm. Hell, Zoe wasn’t even sure they left their little judicial post near Mount Olympus. Sure, they changed its appearance all the time, but they had stayed in the same place—somewhere near Greece, but not in Greece or anywhere else in the mortal realm—since the heyday of Athens, thousands of years ago.

  “No,” Zoe whispered.

  “No?” Kinneally asked. He had been watching her. She had felt that blue gaze as if it were fingers on her shoulder. “No what?”