“It’s an earthquake!” Kyle said and dove under the table.
He was right. Travers had lived through enough of the things to recognize that moment of indecision, that inability to accept that terra firma wasn’t so firma after all.
He slid under the table as well.
“What’re you doing?” Clotho asked.
“Get down here!” Kyle said. “You could die.”
Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos slipped under the table. Atropos was still holding a piece of pizza and Bartholomew Fang lunged for it.
Travers caught him just in time.
“There aren’t earthquakes in Las Vegas,” Zoe said.
“There are earthquakes everywhere,” Travers said. “Get down here. We’re in a hotel. If the ceiling falls in—”
“I’ll hold it up,” Zoe said.
The statement would have sounded ridiculous coming from anyone else, but Travers didn’t doubt that she would. Her shapely legs moved away from the table, her narrow high heels making a clicking sound on the floor that was almost inaudible under the rattling dishes.
“I’m not worried about the ceiling,” Kyle whispered. “I’m worried about the floor.”
“What is this?” Lachesis asked.
“It’s like that abysmal movie,” Atropos said. “Remember? Clotho didn’t want to watch it because it had an exclamation point in the title.”
“And I was right, wasn’t I?” Clotho said, wrapping her arms around her legs. “Exclamation points in movie titles are always bad.”
Travers couldn’t believe they were discussing movies at a time like this. He put his arm around Kyle and pulled the boy close. Kyle grabbed Bartholomew Fang, who whimpered in protest.
“Now isn’t that strange?” Zoe asked.
Her feet were near the window which, if she hadn’t had magic, Travers would have warned her against.
“What’s strange?” Kyle asked, his voice vibrating.
“No one has stopped driving. No one has run onto the street. Everything looks normal outside,” Zoe said.
“Oh, dear,” Lachesis said.
“Better trace the magic,” Atropos said.
“Magic?” Travers asked.
And then blue smoke filled the room—powder-blue smoke that smelled faintly of Limburger cheese. A cackling laugh that Travers didn’t recognize followed, and then a wizened face peered under the table cloth.
“Hiding, ladies?” The laugh apparently belonged to the face, which seemed to belong to a man who bore a strong resemblance to the apple witches Travers’ sisters used to make when he was a kid. “And you brought friends.”
Clotho sighed. “What do you want, Nero?”
“Nero?” Travers asked, feeling his heart rate increase. “The Nero?”
“Of course, the Nero,” said the apple witch, sliding under the table to join them. He was wearing a purple satin shirt with poet sleeves and white bell-bottom pants, also made of satin. His hair was silvery black, and his eyes were the same odd color.
He reached for Travers. Nero’s hand was as shriveled as his face. “This one has raw magic, ladies.”
Nero grinned, which made his eyes virtually disappear among the wrinkles.
“Raw magic is so easy to steal. How did you let him by you? I thought you were supposed to protect all the baby magicians so that they couldn’t lose their powers.”
Travers ducked so that Nero couldn’t touch him.
“Leave him alone!” Kyle said, as Bartholomew Fang growled.
Nero’s eyes lit up. “Another one. And so young. The power’s not ready in him. But I can use it. I can definitely use it…”
He reached out again, and this time, Atropos slapped his hand. He clutched it to his chest and looked like he was about to cry.
“He’s not the Nero,” Lachesis said, with contempt. “If by Nero, you mean that horrible little Roman man with delusions of grandeur.”
“This one is, though, the first Nero,” said Atropos.
“And he’s been trouble since the day he first wandered into the halls of Justice,” Clotho said.
“Only then, he didn’t have much magic.” Lachesis narrowed her eyes. “You’ve been stealing.”
Nero laughed. “Go ahead, punish me. I hear you ladies are out of power and magickless.”
Kyle bit his lower lip, which he always did when the lip threatened to tremble and reveal how frightened he was. Bartholomew Fang continued to growl, baring his teeth as he did so. Maybe he did deserve the name “Fang” after all. Those teeth were mighty impressive.
“We’re merely—” Clotho started to speak but didn’t get to finish. Instead, she and the other two Fates vanished.
Nero looked at Travers in surprise. Travers was equally surprised. He had no idea they could do that, either.
Then Nero smiled. “Well, now that they’re gone—”
Duct tape appeared on Nero’s mouth. He lifted his hands toward it, and suddenly they were bound with duct tape as well. He made little “mmph-mmph” sounds, and pushed himself away from Travers with his feet.
Then more duct tape appeared, wrapping itself around Nero’s ankles. Little puffs of smoke—that silly blue, smelling of Limburger—appeared around his face and his hands, as if he were trying to free himself and couldn’t.
“Nero!” Three female voices spoke in a rough unison. “You shall not disturb us or our friends again. Warn everyone you see that the rumors about the Fates are untrue. You shall escape serious punishment this time, but in the next, you will receive exactly what’s coming to you.”
Nero’s oddly colored eyes grew wide and filled with tears. He struggled, but he couldn’t free himself.
Travers wanted to get out from under the table, but he couldn’t. Kyle was rooted to his spot. And Bartholomew Fang was drooling as he growled, making him look as fearsome as a dachshund could.
“Begone!” the voices said, and then Nero vanished, this time without the blue smoke. The smell lingered, oddly strong, which made Travers wonder if the cheese odor wasn’t Nero’s own unfortunate personal scent.
The table cloth went up and Zoe peered beneath it. “You gonna stay under there all day?”
Kyle looked at her as if she were his savior. “Is the earthquake over?”
“It never was,” she said, extending him her hand. “It’s a sign of badly used magic when someone about to transport in from somewhere else gets the vibrations wrong.”
Kyle crawled out from under the table. Bartholomew Fang still growled. Travers put his hand on the dog’s back, and Fang whirled, snapping and snarling.
Travers held his hands up like an outlaw about to be arrested. “It’s just me.”
The dog breathed heavily through his long snout, then sat on his haunches. He looked tinier than he had a moment ago.
“You’re one tough pooch,” Travers said.
“And you’re one strange man.” Zoe was peering under the table again. “You want to come out now?”
He did. He scooted out to find Kyle on a nearby couch, a pillow clasped against his stomach.
“That man,” Kyle whispered. “He was going to hurt us.”
“He wasn’t going to hurt anyone,” Zoe said. “He was just after the Fates. Which reminds me.”
She snapped her fingers.
The Fates reappeared in the center of the living room floor, only they sat in the same positions they had held when they were under the table.
“—experimenting,” Clotho finished. Then she looked around, surprised.
“What is the meaning of this?” Lachesis asked. But her voice, which should have sounded booming, actually sounded tiny and a bit scared.
“Someone tampered with us,” Atropos said.
“I made you disappear.” Zoe remained near the table. She took a piece of pizza off her plate. “That idiot Nero had no idea I was in the room.”
“So?” Clotho asked, her voice shaking.
“So,” Travers said, understanding what happened, “Zoe made
it seem like you still have magic.”
“I bought you a few days of protection,” Zoe said. “But not much. A lot of people aren’t happy with you all. You never did make many friends.”
“Our job wasn’t to make friends,” Lachesis said.
“We’re judges,” Atropos said. “We’re supposed to be impartial.”
“Unfortunately,” Clotho said, “impartiality often leads to difficult rulings.”
“Which leads to difficult sentences,” Lachesis said.
“Which leads to difficult interpersonal relations,” Atropos said.
“It’s just easier to say that most people hate you,” Zoe said, and then took a bite of pizza.
That seemed harsh to Travers. Just because the Fates had done their job well didn’t mean they were despised. But he didn’t know a lot about this magic system he was supposed to be part of. And, if he admitted it, that Nero guy had frightened him.
“What’d he mean about the raw magic?” Kyle asked, still clutching the pillow.
“Magic can be stolen,” Clotho said.
“Especially,” Lachesis said, “from people who don’t have theirs under control.”
Travers wasn’t sure that was a bad thing. “So?” he said. “Who’d miss what they didn’t know they had?”
“You are at the most risk, Travers,” Atropos said.
“You have had your magic so long that it has integrated into your personality,” Clotho said.
“If you lose the magic,” Lachesis said, “you will lose yourself.”
“Hmm,” Zoe muttered. “I thought that was my problem.”
The Fates ignored her, but Kyle gave her a frightened look.
His boy was traumatized. Travers pushed himself off the floor and walked over to his son, putting his arm around him.
“What about Kyle?” Travers asked.
“He will be in even more danger when he turns twenty-one,” Atropos said. “He will have a great magic. Yours is tiny. But his is already incorporating into himself.”
Kyle was trembling so hard it felt like he was having his own private earthquake. Travers pulled him even closer.
“So what do we do?” Travers asked.
“Learn,” Clotho said.
“And learn quickly,” Lachesis said.
“You’ll both need mentors,” Atropos said.
“Both of us?” Travers asked. “Not just me?”
The Fates nodded in unison.
Zoe continued to chomp on that piece of pizza, as if she hadn’t eaten for days. She watched the proceedings with wide eyes. Travers couldn’t tell if she approved or not, and for the first time since meeting her, he didn’t care.
“We believe,” Clotho said slowly, “that we can mentor young Kyle for a short time until the appropriate person is found.”
“You can?” Travers blurted. He didn’t want these women training his son to do anything.
“Mentoring is a complex process,” Lachesis said.
“Requiring active magic.” Zoe’s mouth was full, but her meaning was clear. The Fates couldn’t help Kyle if they had no magic.
“Not in the early stages,” Atropos said. “When the student has no magic, no magic is needed to block the errors. Early training is simply theory.”
“But Kyle has magic,” Travers said. “He can read minds.”
“It is not exactly magic,” Clotho said. “More of a manifestation of a later problem.”
“Manifestation?” Kyle asked.
“Don’t worry about it,” Zoe said. “It’s not that important.”
“Are they right?” Travers asked her.
“You’re checking with someone else about magic issues?” Lachesis’ back stiffened. In fact, all of the Fates sat up straighter. Travers wondered what that trick looked like when the women actually had magic to help them look taller.
“Well,” he said, “I mean, I’ve never known you with magic, and—”
Atropos made a sound between a growl and a sigh. “This has got to end soon.”
“We were too easily persuaded to go along with this charade,” Clotho said.
“You were the ones who wanted to cook dinner,” Kyle said, sounding perilously close to tears.
“Not that charade,” Lachesis said. “The one Zeus perpetrated. The one that has led to those…children. The one that will allow licentiousness and loveless futures for the next thousand years.”
“Being a bit dramatic, aren’t we?” Zoe asked.
“You saw them,” Atropos said. “You know what we’re talking about.”
“Actually,” Zoe said, “I heard that you weren’t exactly competent when you took over the job.”
This time Clotho made the growly, sighing sound. And it made Travers nervous. He pulled Kyle even closer.
“We were never that bad,” Clotho said. “We at least knew our mages, knew our job, and knew our powers. These children don’t know anything. They’re puppets of their father’s. If they get the post permanently, everything will be ruined.”
“Well,” Zoe said, setting her pizza crust down. “Not everything.”
“How can you say that?” Lachesis’ voice was growing shrill. “After you’ve—”
“Seen them?” Zoe said. “Because I know incompetence, and even their father will get tired of this at some point. But that doesn’t mean these girls can’t seriously screw up in the meantime.”
Atropos sighed. The Fates eased back down to their normal size.
“What I don’t understand,” Zoe said, “is what you can do without magic.”
“That’s easy,” Clotho said.
“Not easy, exactly,” Lachesis corrected.
“But understandable,” Atropos said.
“All we have to do is find the wheel,” Clotho said.
“What wheel?” Zoe asked.
Travers was watching all of them speak, moving his head to track woman to woman to woman. He was getting tennis neck.
“Our spinning wheel,” Lachesis said, as if that explained everything.
“Spinning wheel?” Zoe asked.
“I thought you knew all about our history,” Atropos said rather bitterly.
“Apparently I don’t.” Zoe sighed and sat down. She crossed her legs and tugged her skirt closer to her knee. She looked lovely, even though she was clearly tired.
“Um.” Travers raised his free hand slightly, feeling like a recalcitrant school child. “Before we get too far off topic, can I ask one question?”
“You mean two questions,” Clotho said.
“No,” Travers said. “I mean one.”
“But you already asked one,” Lachesis said. “So you need permission for two.”
He was getting a headache. He wanted to blame the lingering smell of stinky cheese, but he suspected it was caused by the heat and an entire day of conversation with the Fates.
“Okay,” he said, as if he were humoring a three-year-old, “two questions.”
“You may ask one question,” Atropos said.
“Then he can’t ask anything,” Kyle said. “Be fair!”
“We are being fair,” Clotho said. “He wasted one question. Only one is left.”
Okay. There was a circular logic to that, but not one Travers wanted to explore.
Zoe gave him a sympathetic glance, and he wondered if she realized that he had just saved her from finding out what the case was. He wondered if she appreciated his efforts, or if she had changed her mind again.
“I was wondering,” he said slowly, “how long you would mentor Kyle?”
“Until Zoe’s done with you, of course,” Lachesis said.
“Like hell,” Zoe said. “I told you. I’m not taking on a baby magician.”
Travers felt his cheeks heat. What was it about this woman that made him feel at turns like a desirable man and a teenage boy?
“Train him, Zanthia,” Atropos said. “You won’t regret it.”
“Just like I won’t regret going into Faerie?” Zoe asked.
“Huh?” Zoe asked.
“Looking for the wheel,” Lachesis said.
“Perhaps you two could do it together,” Atropos said with a smile.
“So that’s it,” Zoe said, as if she had made a realization. She threw the pizza crust down like it was a weapon she no longer wanted. “He’s not my true love. You can’t manipulate something like that. When are you going to learn?”
“What?” That word came out of Travers’ mouth, and he didn’t recall thinking it, let alone sending the signal from his brain to his lips. No one had mentioned love before, let alone true love.
Except Zoe. In the context of never having any.
Travers’ cheeks heated. “This is some kind of joke, isn’t it?”
All of the women looked at him. Kyle pressed closer.
“The magic, the tricks—you got me to believe those. But you—” Travers pointed at the Fates “—you lied. You and my sister did collude, didn’t you? On getting me ‘trained’ and getting me married at the same time. She’s happy so she wants me to be happy.”
“That’s not a bad thing,” Kyle whispered.
“I am happy!” Travers shouted, which, even to him, didn’t sound happy at all. He lowered his voice. “I mean, I was happy. I have a great kid and a great life, and I don’t really want to change that. I’ve been dragged to this city against my will. I’ve stayed, I’ve done my part, but I’m not falling in love on command.”
He had to force himself not to look at Zoe. He hadn’t fallen in love with her. He hadn’t. He knew he hadn’t. It wasn’t possible. Love at first sight or, at least, love during the first day—only happened in fairy tales.
Kyle elbowed him.
Travers frowned. Kyle overheard that thought and had a point. Or might have a point, if Travers was exactly sure what Kyle was thinking. (It wasn’t fair that his own kid had an advantage in this area.) They were in a place with Faeries—real Faeries, with magic, and everything. And three women who used to have magic powers, and one woman who still did.
Maybe this was a Faerie tale.
“Bingo, Dad,” Kyle whispered.
“I don’t care,” Travers whispered back.
“What?” Clotho asked.
Travers sat up straighter. Zoe was staring at him, her beautiful eyes wide. She apparently hadn’t expected him to object to being in love with her. And he wasn’t, really. He was objecting to losing control over his life, to being manipulated and forced out of his rut and being commanded to change.
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