“I don’t want her,” Travers said. He was astonished at himself. He was doing his share of lying this day. Maybe enough to last him an entire decade.
He did want her. He just didn’t want her as a teacher. Well, not a teacher of magic. She could teach him other things.
Which she’d probably slap him for even thinking about in her presence.
Good thing she couldn’t hear those thoughts.
“I can, Dad!” Kyle yelled from the bathroom. “Will you knock it off?”
Travers felt his cheeks heat again. He hadn’t even realized the earlier heat had faded until the new heat appeared. He had to get out of this office before he went completely insane.
“It doesn’t matter what you want,” Atropos said.
“You need to be trained,” Clotho said.
“Zoe needs an assistant,” Lachesis said.
“I do not,” Zoe said, sounding very indignant. “I have worked alone my entire life.”
“Of course you have, dear,” Atropos said. “But our case is brand new.”
“All cases are new at one point or another,” Zoe said.
“No,” Clotho said. “New for you.”
Zoe seemed confused. Travers certainly was. All he wanted was to go home and pretend this last week hadn’t happened.
But Kyle wouldn’t allow that.
And besides, pretending this last week hadn’t happened would mean Travers would have to forget about Zoe, which was something he wasn’t willing to do.
At least on the fantasy level.
“Da-ad!”
“Sorry!” Travers yelled.
The women ignored the interchange, just like they were ignoring the sound of water running. Travers wasn’t ignoring it. He just felt he was better served staying in the main office than finding out what his son was doing in the back.
“I’m going to regret asking this,” Zoe said, “but in what way will the case be new for me?”
“Well, my dear,” Lachesis said, “unless your life has changed dramatically while we’ve been in exile, you’ve never ventured into the places this case will take you.”
“Yeah, right,” Zoe said, and somehow Travers believed her. He had a hunch she had seen more mean streets than he ever knew existed. Dark corners, dark alleyways. Zoe Sinclair gave off the sense of knowing more about the shady side of humanity—and inhumanity? What were these people called?
“Mages, Dad,” Kyle yelled.
“What?” Atropos asked.
Travers shook his head. “Seems I’m broadcasting again.”
“Yeah!” Kyle yelled. “Quit it.”
“Would if I could,” Travers said. But he had no idea how. Just like he had no idea how the money—
Whoosh!
—fell from the sky.
Like it was doing now. It was literally raining five-dollar bills in the tiny office.
“Cut it out,” Zoe said.
“Now is not the time, Travers,” Clotho said.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he said.
“No kidding,” Zoe said.
“Say ‘Reverse!’” Lachesis said.
“Reverse!” Travers said as Zoe said, “No, I don’t think that’ll…”
But she let her voice trail off. For a moment, the money stopped raining. Then it slowly rose back to the ceiling, one bill at a time. The problem was the bills just floated up there, not raining, not disappearing either.
“Wow,” Atropos said. “Paper currency is very real to you, isn’t it?”
“Economics is the foundation to everything,” Travers said. “If you look at all human motivation, you’ll find economics behind each and every action.”
“Bull-pucky,” all three Fates said in unison.
“He has a point,” Zoe said.
The Fates looked at her.
“When did you become so cynical?” Clotho asked.
“I’m not cynical,” Zoe said, “and this isn’t about me. It’s about him.”
She pointed at Travers. He felt like a ten-year-old who had been bad.
“How do I make it disappear?” he asked.
“I’ll do it,” she said. “Just let me finish this conversation, okay?”
“Okay.” He rested his hands on his knees and tried not to think. He also tried not to look at the five-dollar bills, moving back and forth across the ceiling, like clouds building on a stormy day.
“All right,” Zoe said, giving him a harsh look. Even that was attractive.
Travers tried to block those thoughts as well. He almost gave himself permission to think of pink elephants, but the problem with those would be—
Whoosh!
—a single pink elephant, the size of a small horse, appeared in the middle of the room. The elephant was stuffed, with a trunk that curled upward like an upside-down question mark, and it was Barbie pink.
It looked vaguely like an elephant he’d won for Kyle at the fair when Kyle was five.
“Stop it!” Zoe said again.
“Sorry,” Travers said.
“You promised,” Zoe said.
“Sorry,” Travers repeated.
“So just stop thinking,” Zoe said.
“I did,” Travers said.
“No,” Zoe said. “You were quite obviously thinking of something else. Try white noise. Try a hum. Try concentrating on this conversation for a change.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Travers said as meekly as he could. He’d never created anything out of thin air before, and here he was, creating pink elephants and money and broadcasting his thoughts. The next thing you knew—
“Dad! Stop that!” Kyle yelled from the back.
Travers took a deep breath. “If you want me to concentrate on this conversation,” he said, “you have to converse.”
“Okay.” Zoe leaned forward, eyeing the Fates. “You said that this case would take me somewhere I’ve never been before.”
“Someplace you’re afraid of,” Lachesis said.
“Someplace you’ve avoided your entire life,” Atropos said.
“Cut the dramatics,” Zoe said. “If you want my help, you’ll have to be clear and precise.”
“Faerie,” Clotho said. “You’ll have to go to Faerie.”
Eleven
Zoe felt cold, even though the office was stifling. The air-conditioning was running so hard she could hear the hum, but the cool draft wasn’t keeping up with the stress, the body heat, and the outdoor temperatures beating against the walls.
Besides, this rather small room was filled with too many people and a giant pink elephant that was grinning beneath its obscene pink trunk.
The Fates were staring at her expectantly. They thought she was going to be angry about their case—about Faerie—and she was. She was angry at the intrusions, she was angry that she had a shoe soaked in dog pee, and she was angry that she wasn’t home, reading a romance novel and trying to forget the world.
But she would be soon. Because there was no way, no matter what had happened, no matter who wanted her help, that she would ever, ever, ever go into Faerie.
These Fates knew she wouldn’t go. It was their fault, after all. It was because of the prophecy they had given her, the prophecy that said she might get lost in Faerie.
Forever.
“You’re testing me,” Zoe said.
The Fates looked startled.
“This was all one big test to see how far you could push me,” Zoe said.
Travers frowned at her. He didn’t know what was going on.
Well, of course he didn’t know what was going on. He didn’t even know that magic existed until two hours ago. Now he was creating stuffed animals from thin air.
She had to turn slightly so she couldn’t see his face. She had never known a man’s face had that much power to distract. Even when she wasn’t looking at it, she was thinking about it.
She clenched her fists, and made sure she was making eye contact with at least one Fate. This time, she chose Atropos.
“You decided to give me everything, right?” Zoe asked. “A cause—saving you from those children—a heroic young boy, and the best-looking man you could find. Then you send me into Faerie, thinking you can reform me, make me into someone who follows all of your rules—”
“You don’t?” Lachesis asked.
It apparently didn’t matter anymore. These Fates weren’t in charge. They might never be in charge again, if Zeus got his way. And if Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos did get back to positions of power, they’d have so much to deal with, they wouldn’t even think of Zoe.
“Of course I don’t follow your rules!” Zoe stood. “Your rules are petty and stupid and impractical in the real world. Because of your silly rules, I can’t take three seconds to magically clean a dog who badly needs it. I have to throw the poor creature into a bathtub—”
At that moment, a long, drawn-out howl echoed throughout the office. The Fates cringed.
Zoe looked toward the bathroom. She had heard splashing water, and had guessed that Kyle was giving Bartholomew a bath, but she hadn’t really thought about it until now.
“It’s okay, really!” Kyle yelled from the back. “Just keep arguing.”
Zoe almost smiled. That kid was one in a thousand.
“Our rules are sane,” Atropos said.
“Really?” Zoe asked. “You brought up Henri Barou. Let me point out how dumb your treatment of him was.”
Travers had turned his attention back to Zoe, who had obviously forgotten to keep him out of her line of vision. Handsome, handsome man. Henri Barou was supposed to be handsome in that traditional American way (he looked like Christopher Reeve crossed with Tom Welling, plus one chin dimple and the blue-black hair usually only found in comic strips) but Zoe had never found him particularly striking.
Unlike Travers, whose blue eyes had a clarity that—
“We did not treat him poorly,” Clotho said, bringing Zoe back to herself.
For a moment, she thought Clotho was referring to Travers, and then she remembered: they were talking about Henri Barou.
“Yes, you did,” Zoe said. “The poor guy has a bad mentor, and so he strikes out on his own. He goes from town to town helping people, and you punish him when two kids confuse what he does and write him up as a comic book superhero.”
“Not just any superhero,” Lachesis said.
“He became a legend,” Atropos said.
“A cultural icon,” Clotho said.
“Super Agent Man,” Lachesis said.
“You mean Secret Agent Man?” Travers asked. “As in, what? The Green Hornet or Maxwell Smart or—”
“Superman,” Zoe said between her teeth, not because Travers interrupted (truth be told, she’d rather talk to him than all the Fates in the world—and there seemed to be an abundance of those lately) but because the Fates were nearly impossible to have a conversation with. All of the Fates. All six of them. “He became the prototype for Superman.”
“Oh, yes,” Atropos said. “We saw those movies. With Margo Kidder. She’s quite the spunky girl.”
“Dumb as a post,” Clotho said. “Who knew that mortals could be fooled by glasses?”
“Stop.” Zoe almost clapped her hands together, and she caught herself just in time. The Fates, if they ever got their power back, might forget that she had challenged them, but they wouldn’t forget if she spelled them. “Just stop talking for a moment.”
All three women looked at her with identical expressions on their non-identical faces. Blue, green, and brown eyes were open the exact same width, as were their mouths. Even their chins were at the same angle.
Travers, fortunately, didn’t share the expression. He was watching Zoe with a bemused smile.
“Henri Barou,” Zoe said, “was helping people. You shut him down because of something out of his control. You said he was leaking information to the mortals when he was not. He was simply doing what mages have done from the beginning of time. He was becoming a myth. And you stopped that.”
“Mortals no longer have myths,” Lachesis said.
Zoe held up the index finger on her right hand, like a school marm about to discipline unruly children. “I said stop talking.”
Lachesis bit her lower lip. The other Fates did the same.
Zoe said, “You forbade Henri from interfering in mortal affairs because of his little infraction, so he had to come to me when he saw some trouble that he didn’t know how to deal with. In the meantime, you let people like Ealhswith—”
“You know Ealhswith?” Atropos asked.
“Oh, please,” Zoe said. “she tried to hire me years ago to find Sleeping Beauty.”
“Sleeping Beauty?” Travers asked.
“Long story,” Clotho said.
“And besides,” Lachesis whispered, “we’re not supposed to talk.”
“Oh, yeah,” Atropos said, putting her hands over her mouth. “Sorry.”
Zoe sighed. Even she had gotten distracted by these women. How crazy was that?
“Anyway,” Zoe said, “you let people like Ealhswith and Eris and Cupid—”
“Cupid?” Travers asked. “The God of Love?”
“He was never the God of Love,” the Fates said in unison.
“It’s a misnomer we’re not fond of,” Clotho said.
“But we’ll discuss it later,” Lachesis whispered to Travers, as if they were co-conspirators.
“You let all of them run free,” Zoe said, “wreaking havoc on the mortals, and they caused a lot more destruction than Henri Barou or any of the good mages ever could.”
“May we speak now?” Atropos said.
“Oh, why not?” Zoe sat down. She was getting tired of arguing.
“All three of the people you mentioned are imprisoned now. Ealhswith for life,” Clotho said.
“And Cupid for a goodly long time,” Lachesis said, still speaking in a near-whisper.
“We, of course, don’t know about Eris,” Atropos said.
“I doubt those children punished her at all,” Clotho said.
Zoe had heard that Eris got a long and particularly ugly sentence for the things she had done in Oregon last summer, but Zoe wasn’t about to admit that. She didn’t want to think of the Interim Fates doing anything approaching a good job.
“We punish violations when we can,” Lachesis said, “but it’s hard to monitor everyone, which was what we were supposed to do.”
“We realize now that it was more of Zeus’ undermining. He gave us too much work, and not enough time to do it. He wants us to go away, you know,” Atropos said.
“You mentioned that.” Travers spoke up. He didn’t look at Zoe. In fact, he seemed to be deliberately avoiding eye contact. “Why would a god like Zeus try to hurt the three of you?”
“Good question, Dad!” Kyle yelled from the next room. Then there was a splash, another yip, and a dang it! followed by the sound of skin against porcelain, and more splashes.
“Do you need help?” Travers asked.
“Nope!” Kyle’s voice sounded strangled. “I got it just fine.”
“Zeus is not a God,” the Fates said, with as much vehemence as they had used about Cupid.
“I was raised that he was—a mythological god, but a god nonetheless,” Travers said.
“See how they corrupt?” Clotho said to Zoe. “See why we don’t like myths?”
“If he’s not a god, what is he?” Travers asked.
“A Power That Is,” Lachesis said. “One of the ruling body of the magical, so old that he has a lot more magic than he should.”
“And too many privileges with which to indulge that magic,” Atropos said.
“The others in Mount Olympus don’t take this kind of advantage,” Clotho said.
“Strictly speaking,” Lachesis said, “some of them do.”
“Ladies,” Zoe said. “I’m tired of the digressions. I’ve made my point, and you’ve probably already forgotten it. Heck, I’ve even forgotten it, and I was the one making it. So let�
�s just call it a day. You can go back to wherever it was that Mr. Kinneally found you and I can continue in my nice, quiet little life in my not-so-nice, not-so-quiet hometown. Okay?”
“No,” the Fates said.
For a group that no longer had magic, they were doing an excellent job of speaking in unison. Were they linked to each other’s thoughts? Zoe wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
“Well, I say so, and it’s my office, so you’re going to leave.” Zoe stood again and nodded toward Travers. “It looks like you’ll need to find someone else to take these ladies off your hands.”
“Nope.” He stood too. “I’m leaving them here. C’mon, Kyle.”
“Just a minute, Dad.”
“Now, Kyle.”
“Okay.”
There was a squishing sound, followed by the swoosh of a drain. Kyle Kinneally came back into the office, looking like he’d been swimming with his clothes on. He carried Bartholomew under one arm. The dog didn’t even look wet. But he didn’t smell as bad, either. His ears had perked up and his tail was wagging.
Zoe had never seen him look so happy.
“Can we keep the dog, Dad?” Kyle asked.
Travers looked at his son, and his shoulders sagged. “What would we do with a dog, Kyle?”
“He likes us,” Kyle said. “He told me.”
“You talk to animals now, too?” Travers asked.
Kyle ducked his head so that he couldn’t make eye contact with his father. Obviously, he still wasn’t comfortable talking about his powers with Travers.
“Only some animals,” Kyle said.
Bartholomew’s tail kept wagging. Little drops of water were spraying all over the office.
Zoe could only hope that the water was from the sink.
Travers had his hands on his hips. He sighed heavily.
“So, Dad,” Kyle said, raising his head. “Can we keep him?”
“Kyle—”
“He really likes you, and he says you need help, and he’s willing to help in any way a familiar can.” Kyle finally took a breath. Travers looked like he was about to say something, when Kyle continued. “But you have to give him a new name. He wants to be called Fang.”
Everyone in the room looked at the obese dachshund in Kyle’s arms. The dog squirmed happily, resembling nothing more than a happy sausage with a tail and a head.
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