He walked into the office, set the lotion on the desk, and sat in the chair closest to the desk. While he had been healing his face, Zoe had cleaned up the front. The smell of wet fur was gone, along with the remaining five-dollar bill, and that embarrassing scrap of pink cloth.
“This is going to be difficult for you,” she said. “You’ll be learning about two magic systems at once. You’ll have to keep firmly in mind which refers to our system and which refers to the Faerie system.”
“How do you know that I’m not part of the Faerie system?” he asked.
To his surprise, she grinned. “You don’t have pointed ears and a rude manner.”
“Excuse me?”
“The Faerie’s magic is hereditary. Occasionally, the Faeries bring in a civilian, but the Faerie traits dominate. You’d have a particular look if you were Faerie.”
Travers was intrigued. “So how do we get our magic?”
“No one knows. We’re all orphans. We just appear on someone’s doorstep one day.” Then Zoe peered at him. “Except you. You have a family. Kyle has magic. He’s your son, right?”
“Oh, yeah,” Travers said. “Can’t you tell?”
She smiled. “You look alike, but sometimes that doesn’t mean anything. Especially when you’re dealing with magic. What about the rest of your family?”
“My sisters and I were adopted,” Travers said. “Kyle says that Vivian has magic—or will. She’s psychic, too, although I never believed it before this month.”
“And your other sister?” Zoe asked.
“Megan?” Travers shrugged. “She’s as normal as they come.”
“Like you.”
He felt the words as if they had a steel edge. The ease he had thought was returning between him and Zoe disappeared.
“Good point,” he said.
“Still, two or three in one family is very unusual for us. Did the Fates say anything to you about this?” Zoe asked.
Travers shook his head.
“So they knew about it.” She steepled her fingers and leaned back in her chair. It squeaked. “Fascinating.”
He didn’t want to think about his family. Not about his sisters or his parents or Kyle. Especially not Kyle, who, if Travers was lucky, was at this moment talking Klingon to some poor unsuspecting Star Trek: the Experience employee.
“Your parents have no magic?” Zoe asked.
“My parents found Viv appalling,” Travers said. “Not because she had psychic experiences, but because they often made her black out. My folks took her to all kinds of doctors, but it wasn’t until our Aunt Eugenia—”
He stopped and frowned.
“Your aunt,” Zoe said.
He shook his head. “She wasn’t really an aunt. But she did help Viv. She even left her fortune to Viv. And Aunt Eugenia was weird. She had a way of making things happen.”
“So your sister had a mentor,” Zoe said. “I wonder what exactly happened to yours.”
Travers shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. You were going to explain the different systems to me.”
“No,” Zoe said. “I was going to tell you about my progress.”
She tapped her steepled fingers against her chin, as if she were thinking about how to discuss this. He couldn’t believe this was the same woman he’d kissed not half an hour before. She was cool and distant, not laughing and warm like she had been when they’d arrived.
“The Faeries,” she said after a moment, “believe in collecting power.”
“I think someone mentioned that yesterday,” Travers said.
“They take it from even the tiniest sources,” Zoe said, undeterred. “Sometimes they use it, and sometimes they keep it. They hoard magical power for the future, so that if something happens and they need extra power, they can tap it, like a reservoir.”
“Our people don’t do that?” Travers asked.
“We consider it theft,” Zoe said.
“Like what nearly happened last night,” Travers said.
Zoe unsteepled her fingers, opened her hands in an I-don’t-know gesture, and, for good measure, shrugged. “That’s extreme, at least for Faerie. Pretty common for us. Faerie goes after items—totems. You know, if you had a lucky quarter and whether or not it was lucky, you believed that it was, the Faeries would want it.”
“Because I have magic,” Travers said.
“Even if you don’t. The Faeries think belief transfers a magical essence and, from what I’ve seen in this town, they may not be wrong.”
“So by stealing this spinning wheel—”
“They stole great power from the Fates,” Zoe said.
“Why didn’t the Fates go after them?” Travers asked.
“That is the question, isn’t it?” Zoe stood up. She paced behind her desk like a detective in the last scene of a locked-room mystery. “I’ve been asking myself that since yesterday. Part of it is pretty simple: the Fates didn’t want a war with Faerie.”
“Isn’t that what they said?” Travers asked. A lot of the day before was a blur. His mind had to reorganize itself, and it still wasn’t done. He thought he was doing pretty well for a man who believed he wasn’t anything special, only to discover that he had an ability that made him extremely unusual.
“That’s part of what they said.” Zoe leaned against the desk, revealing a great deal of thigh. Travers had no idea why she wore skirts when so many women didn’t anymore, but he didn’t object.
Not even now, when he was pretending he could get his hormones back under control.
“They also said they didn’t need the wheel anymore,” Zoe was saying.
It took Travers a bit to concentrate on that last. The thigh had distracted him even more than he thought it would.
“But they need it now,” Travers said. “What if it doesn’t have any magic left?”
“If the Faeries have stolen the power?” Zoe let out a whistling breath. “Oh, dear. That might be war. Some magical items—not totems like we were talking about, but items with true magic—they can’t be depleted, except through overuse or misuse.”
“And ruining this spinning wheel, which has been gone for longer than the Western World has recorded history, would be a cause for war?”
“Don’t ask me,” Zoe said, tugging at the edge of her skirt. “For a mage, I’m pretty young.”
She wasn’t looking at him when she said that. This was the third time she had brought up age. Perhaps it bothered her. It only intrigued him, although it might not have, if he still believed he had a limited lifespan.
Perhaps that was the best factor, the most mitigating. He might have all this pesky magic, but in exchange, he got to live what, in his mind, seemed like forever.
“It just seems odd,” Travers said, thinking that sentence was odd. Everything had been odd since Viv’s wedding. Only some things had been odder than others. “We’re not going to start a war, are we, by stealing the thing?”
“We’re not going to steal it.” Zoe hopped off the desk. There was something she wasn’t telling him. Some plan.
“And shouldn’t we even see if the wheel still has some power?”
Zoe looked at him over her shoulder. Her hair had caught on the edge of her lip, and she brushed the strand away.
“You don’t get this, do you?” Her voice was low, almost dangerous. “What the Fates want us to do—want me to do—is go to one of the most unstable places on the planet and reconnoiter for them. I’ll be lucky to get out alive, Travers.”
“I thought you said you wouldn’t have to go into Faerie.” He matched his tone to hers. He wasn’t going to let her intimidate him, no matter what.
“I’m hoping I won’t,” she said. “I have a few tricks that might work.”
Travers sighed. He felt awkward sitting while she stood over him, looking like one of those mythic amazon women. Or maybe they weren’t mythic, if Zeus ruled the world (or part of it) and Faeries really did exist. Travers blinked, not willing to contemplate all the implications of th
at particular thought—wishing he had time to sit in a dark room for maybe—oh, who knew? A year or more—and assimilate all that he had learned so far.
But he didn’t have that kind of time. And he was supposed to apprentice magic with a woman who might have to walk into danger at any moment, a woman he still wanted to kiss even though he vowed not to, a woman he would make love to if she only touched his skin again like she had a few minutes earlier.
He cleared his throat, hoping she hadn’t noticed all the various emotions he had just run through—particularly the last one. “You were going to tell me what you found.”
She nodded, and leaned against the desk again. Only this time she was facing him. If he were cruder, or younger, or bolder, he would adjust his chair ever so slightly. It wouldn’t take much to peer along those thighs, underneath that skirt—
Travers clenched his fists so hard that the nails bit into his skin. He had to control his thoughts, if not for his hormones’ sake, then for the sake of his magic. He didn’t want to make another English mistake—only this time, with Zoe.
“You ready for a history lesson?” Zoe asked.
This time, Travers sighed loudly. All he’d been getting the last few days were history lessons. And he’d been a math major. History and fiction had never interested him.
“Do I have a choice?” he asked.
“Not if you want to know what’s going on,” Zoe said.
“I figured as much,” Travers said, and braced himself. He would need some trick for paying attention, besides avoiding looking at Zoe’s knees.
To his relief, she went around the desk and plopped in her chair.
“Let me tell you a true Faerie tale,” she said, and started to talk.
Twenty-one
Kyle sat under one of the big umbrellas at the water park, feeling nearly naked in his swim trunks. He was sipping a vanilla milkshake, his feet propped on the chair beside him, while the Fates were splashing around in one of the nearby pools.
Through the gate, he could see the Strip— more cars and people than he wanted to think about—and all the grand Vegas stuff folks were always talking about: the big towers, the glass-sided hotels, and casinos, casinos, casinos.
If he saw another person carrying one of those plastic jugs of nickels and thinking, One more chance—all I need is one more chance, he’d knock the jug from their hands, scream, One more chance isn’t going to make you any richer than you already are! and run away.
He had never realized how badly adults could delude themselves until he came here.
He had been banned from the water into the shade of this poolside umbrella because his skin was turning that lovely shade of red his dad called “lobster.” Kyle had even bought sunscreen—planning ahead because he knew swimming was an option. But he couldn’t get anything above an SPF of 30 and he needed at least 50 to spend a lot of time in the sun.
So the Fates had banished him to the shade, where he got to watch their matching purses, their towels, their clothes, and their milkshakes.
Kyle really wanted to get back to the air-conditioned hotel room, see how Fang was doing, and take a nap. But he didn’t want to admit the nap thing to anyone. It was just, after some hours of sightseeing and goofing in the sun, he was tired.
He was also tired of being vigilant. The Fates were naïve—it felt like he was baby-sitting them instead of the other way around. They didn’t even notice how all the grown-up men in Star Trek: The Experience were hitting on them.
Clotho got asked out the most (Kyle was keeping track) but that was probably because she was blond and looked a lot like Heidi Klum. (So, Kyle assumed, people were probably mistaking her for the supermodel.) Lachesis and Atropos tied with the same number of men asking them out—sometimes the same men, who would go from one beautiful woman to the other without taking a breath.
Kyle was actually glad to get to the darkness of the shuttle simulator, and when the ride was over, he turned down the Fates’ offer to take him to Quark’s Bar and Restaurant just so he could get them out of the building.
He hadn’t expected them to immediately head for the water park. But they’d brought their giant purses, and one of the Fates had been smart enough to shove his swimming suit into the bag with theirs. He argued the whole walk over from the Hilton, where the Experience was, to the water park, but the Fates wouldn’t budge.
They had it in their heads that they would give him a good time, whether he wanted it or not.
What he really wanted was for those weird men to stop following him.
Actually, Kyle wasn’t sure if the weird men were following him or the Fates. At first, Kyle thought the men were extras at Star Trek: The Experience. They looked like short, thin Vulcans wearing the wrong kind of makeup. Their skin was darker than Spock’s but not as dark as Tuvok’s or T’Pol’s. Their eyebrows didn’t slash darkly like a Vulcan’s, but soared over the eyes like wings.
But the thing that made these guys the most like Vulcans were their pointed ears. These things were masterful, even better than the ones on the current show. They looked real.
In the Hilton, Kyle had gone from escalator to elevator, trying to see if the guys were really following (just like detectives did in television chase scenes) and sure enough, the guys kept turning up—as his dad would say—like a bad penny.
So Kyle had mentioned this to the Fates on the way out of the Hilton, suggesting maybe a stop at their hotel (and thinking hopefully of a nap), when the Fates actually stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and turned around.
Kyle had to stop next to them, and hang there while the Fates looked for the guys—not that they were hard to miss. These guys kept walking toward the Fates, all determined, their expressions really serious.
The guys wore black, too, which had to be really hot on the sidewalk, without any shade at all. Kyle wasn’t wearing black—his t-shirt and shorts were appropriate to the weather—and the heat, which he was kinda used to from L.A., was killing him.
These guys didn’t even notice.
It took a moment for the Fates to see the guys, but when they did, all three women giggled.
Giggled!
Like Caitlin always did in math class when Jason Budregas made faces at her. She would just giggle and giggle and giggle like she couldn’t stop and finally the teacher had to separate them.
The Fates giggled, and blushed, too, and for a minute, Kyle thought they wouldn’t be able to stop, but they did, told him not to worry (in three different, yet confusing, ways) and urged him on to the water park.
He checked as they paid on the way in. The guys didn’t follow. Instead, they kept walking like they weren’t even interested in the water or the Fates or anything.
The Fates kinda deflated then, and Kyle asked them if they knew those guys. And the Fates said no, but he couldn’t tell if they were lying.
And he never did get close enough to the guys to see what they were thinking. But Kyle knew if he ever saw them again, he would try to find out.
He finished his milkshake, sucking the last bit of vanilla creaminess out of the bottom with his straw, enjoying the slurpy sound. No one here to tell him to knock it off. No one to annoy.
And no one to mentally eavesdrop on, either. All people were thinking about was what a great day they were having, how nice the sun was, how nice the water was, and how much they hoped their (kid, mother, grandfather, best friend) was enjoying the trip.
Kyle burped and reached for Lachesis’ strawberry shake, then changed his mind. He was stuffed, even if he hadn’t had lunch yet.
He glanced at the water slide, watched Atropos go down with her hands up and her head back as she laughed and screamed at the same time. He wanted to go, but he didn’t. He remembered the last time he’d gotten badly sunburned. Dad had actually had to take him to the emergency room where they reamed out Dad, not Kyle, and it hadn’t even been Dad’s fault.
Kyle stretched. Maybe the nearby vendors would have sunscreen with the right SPF. He
stood, wrapped a towel over his shoulders like a cape, and padded barefoot across the hot concrete to the nearest shop.
He had some money stuffed in the pocket of his suit. Too late, he realized he’d left the Fates’ purses behind. He turned around and headed back to the umbrella, only to see those three guys walking toward it from the opposite direction.
Kyle felt like he was in one of those old Western movies, where the good guys and the bad guys face off in the noon-day sun. Only he’d forgotten to bring his share of the good guys. There was just him, and these three guys with pointed ears.
The guys had changed out of their black leather. They were wearing Speedos, and the suits looked okay on them, too. Only these guys had tattoos across their tummies and backs and down their arms, tattoos of things like women with wings and dragons and others stuff that Kyle had only seen on fantasy novels.
They also had pierced nipples, which made Kyle hurt. He clutched the towel even tighter and kept walking. Given luck, he’d get to the umbrella table at the same time as the guys.
He opened his mind as he hurried, hoping to catch their thoughts. But he got the same old great sun, great day, great vacation, wish you were here, hope Mom’s enjoying herself, dang! I stubbed my toe, oh, I ate too much and all of that.
Nothing that three guys with pointed ears and tattoos would be thinking.
Kyle ran to back to his chair and slipped into it before the guys arrived. Then he thought sitting was a really stupid idea because he was at a disadvantage—he couldn’t move quick and he couldn’t get away. And, not to mention, his back was to the guys.
He turned around, but the guys were gone.
Kyle looked for the Fates, and didn’t see them, either.
Then all three came down the big water slide, their legs wrapped around each other, screaming joyfully in three-part harmony.
Kyle sighed and stood. He was going to have to be the grown-up on this one, and he hated being the grown-up. If he’d learned anything this morning, that was it. He wanted someone else to make the decisions.
The Fates surfaced in the pool, their blond, red, and black hair looking weirdly bright in the Vegas sun. They waved at Kyle and he beckoned them forward.
Absolutely Captivated Page 22
