Absolutely Captivated

by Grayson, Kristine

  This place played a lot of tricks on the eyes, and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like any of it. He felt awkward just standing in the middle of the room like a forgotten child, unable to touch anything.

  Still, he had to do something. Maybe there were books here that he could buy, books that would help him study his new magical life. Travers sighed. It felt so odd to think about a new magical life.

  A movement caught Travers’ eye. A mirror bubbled to life, filled with fog like a steaming pot. He frowned at it, but didn’t step any closer.

  The mirror was oval-shaped, just like the mirrors in the movies, and it had a gilt frame that looked both heavy and sturdy. The mirror was mounted on the wall, and beneath it was a calligraphed sign that said in large letters:

  Don’t Touch!!

  He didn’t plan to. He had heard the warnings, and he was learning that they existed for a good reason.

  Still, the mirror continued to fog as if someone had a dry ice machine running behind it. At the thought, Travers turned and saw only more tables behind him, tables with tiny items that he couldn’t identify.

  Finally a large cloud of smoke left the mirror. The smoke surged forward, dispersing in the already dark room. The air smelled faintly of burning leaves, and then the scent faded as if it never was.

  The mirror cleared, like a pond after ripples faded away, and he found himself staring at a woman’s face.

  She had wild, green hair that exploded around her head as if she were a cartoon character who had stuck her fingers in a light socket. The green, however, accented her opalescent skin, and made her green eyes glow.

  The mirror only showed her from her face to her shoulders. She wore nothing on that part of her body, not even earrings or a necklace. The look provided the illusion of nudity, even if she were fully dressed from the chest downward.

  She was oddly beautiful. Travers took a step toward her before he had to consciously think of stopping.

  He wasn’t supposed to touch anything, no matter what.

  “There you are,” the woman said, her voice rich and warm, filled with vibrato. It almost sounded as if she were singing. “I’ve been sensing you all day, and you’re in Elmer’s store. Your magic makes you unhappy.”

  Travers looked over his shoulder, hoping that someone else was in the store with him. No one was, of course. He was on his own.

  She raised her eyebrows. They were black, which somehow accented all that green. “I heard Elmer’s instructions. He said not to touch, but he didn’t say not to talk.”

  “Who are you?” Travers asked.

  She smiled. “Someone who can make your life a whole lot easier.”

  Travers crossed his arms. “I don’t talk to mysterious people who refuse to give their names.”

  “I’ve gotten a sense of you,” she said as if he hadn’t spoken, “just from the short time that I’ve been observing you. It’s pretty clear to me that you don’t like this magic business. I can take your powers off your hands in exchange for the wheel.”

  “Wheel?” he asked, his heart pounding.

  “The spinning wheel,” the woman said. “The one your friends the Fates are looking for. I can give it to you.”

  Scam operators were the same in magic worlds and non-magic worlds. Somehow Travers found that reassuring.

  “Who did you say you were?” he asked.

  “Why does it matter so much?” Her voice was like melted honey.

  “Because I don’t deal with people I don’t know,” he said.

  “Hmm.” Her smile widened. “Savvy to the way of the world, are we?”

  “I don’t know about ‘we,’” Travers said, “but me, I have always made it a policy to deal with people I know, whose reputation has been verified, and who will work honestly with me.”

  He almost leaned against a nearby table, then caught himself.

  The woman in the mirror didn’t seem to notice his movement. Her startling green eyes had narrowed. She obviously didn’t like the direction this conversation was taking.

  “So,” Travers said, “tell me who you are, I’ll check with people I know about your reputation, and then we’ll see if we can come to terms we both like.”

  She raised her chin. Her eyes seemed to be an even brighter green. It was almost as if they were lit from within.

  “This is a one-time offer,” she said. “Decide now, or lose the wheel forever.”

  Travers gave her his most charming smile. “I’m afraid I’ve made my decision.”

  “You’ll regret it,” she said, and winked out of the mirror. For a moment, its surface rippled as if it were a pond that had been disturbed. Then the smoke sucked back into the glass in one large cloud, almost like reverse photography.

  The smoke swirled and boiled for a long time before it faded into nothingness. The glass now reflected the interior of the store.

  Travers sighed. He hoped he had done the right thing. He hoped he hadn’t screwed up their chance to find the spinning wheel.

  But even if he had, he didn’t entirely regret what he had done. Fairy tales had taught him not to trust women who hid in mirrors. And besides, he’d wanted to bargain. She just hadn’t worked with him.

  In his world—his old world—that was the sure sign of a flimflam artist.

  He hoped it was in this new world as well.

  Those were his superficial reasons for turning her down, but deep inside, he had one more, and it really unsettled him.

  He was beginning to like the idea of having magic. He had been the most normal person in his family, a man who lived a normal life with a not-so-normal child. He had a normal job, and he lived in a normal house.

  He’d never really had the chance to be different.

  And now he was.

  Strange what a difference a few days could make. He’d learned that before, when Kyle was born, but he was learning it all over again.

  Travers’ world had changed, and now that he was used to the change, he was growing to like it—chaos and all.

  Twenty-six

  The curtain swished around Zoe as she followed Elmer into his back room.

  The space beyond the curtains was dark. Obviously this was Elmer’s way of controlling the people around him. He had them step through a doorway into darkness, then gradually revealed their surroundings.

  This time, the smells that engulfed her were mundane: a faint odor of dusty cloth mixed with an even fainter odor of mothballs. For all she knew, that was how the curtain could have smelled.

  Then the lights came up, slowly, as if someone were turning on a variety of switches that operated fixtures all over the room. Zoe’s back muscles were tight with tension; she had been here once before when Elmer had given a tour to some of his favorite magic-users. That day, the main part of the store had been the size of a warehouse. It had held posters from Houdini and little curios from the real magic users who had died in the Spanish Inquisition.

  This afternoon, however, the room was tiny, barely the size of an average bedroom. A single table lined the back wall, and two chairs sat in front of it. Both of the chairs were made of wood with plain wooden seats. A boom box sat on an otherwise empty shelf, but no sound echoed in the room except Zoe’s breathing.

  Elmer stood near the chairs. He had changed clothing in the seconds he was waiting for her. Now he wore a pair of faded blue jeans and a matching denim shirt. His raven-black hair cascaded down his back, and a single thin braid, decorated with beads, ran down the middle of the cascade.

  Elmer’s magic combined several Native American traditions, although he had also been trained in mage magic and more Faerie spells than any other non-Faerie magician. His real name wasn’t Elmer, of course. Zoe had no idea what it was.

  But she had heard that he had been in this region for centuries. He knew what happened to the Anasazi and after the Spanish introduced horses to the New World, he had ridden all over the Southwest in search of new spells.

  He collected magic like most people col
lected books. He did not acquire magic to add to his own power, but instead he understood the history of most magic systems she’d ever heard of, learned as many of their spells as he could, and sold that knowledge.

  He also collected magical items and sold them as well. Zoe knew he didn’t have the spinning wheel because he had been the first person she had checked with, and she trusted him enough to believe him when he told her that he had never seen it, although he had heard of it.

  “What is it that your young friend can’t hear?” Elmer asked, his hands threaded before him.

  “Actually,” Zoe said, “I’m less concerned about him than I am about all those things you have in the back room. Elmer, I saw at least five portals.”

  He shrugged. “They’re becoming less and less useful in this day of airplane travel. No one wants devices any more. They want to learn how to do the work themselves.”

  Zoe didn’t know how to respond to that. She looked around, wondering why he had changed the shape of the room. Was he out of inventory?

  He swept his hand toward the chairs. “Take a seat, my dear.”

  His manner was different here, less abrasive. He sat first, put his hands on his knees, and waited.

  Zoe perched on the edge of the other chair.

  “I have a love potion,” Elmer said before she even started. “But I don’t think it will do you any good.”

  “What?” Zoe slid back in the chair. His comment surprised her. It was so far from what she’d been thinking about that it took her a moment to understand him.

  “A love potion,” Elmer said. “In fact, I could make up several. But attraction isn’t the problem here. Understanding is.”

  “Excuse me?” Zoe asked.

  Elmer frowned, the look making his narrow eyes nearly disappear in his face. “You want to make the relationship with the young man work, don’t you? He is the one you’ve been waiting for.”

  Zoe hated it when people made assumptions. “First of all, I haven’t been waiting for anyone. Secondly, I’m not here about a love potion. And thirdly, if I needed anything like that—which I don’t—I would have made it myself.”

  “My mistake.” Elmer said that as if he believed he hadn’t made a mistake at all. “What are you here for?”

  Zoe made herself take a deep breath. “Three things. I need a protection charm that will withstand most people with small magicks.”

  Elmer’s frown deepened.

  “I need a location spell that’s guaranteed to work.”

  Elmer sighed.

  “And,” Zoe said, trying not to sound dramatic and knowing she was failing, “I need a map of Faerie.”

  “Faerie?” Elmer sounded like he choked on the word.

  “Yes,” Zoe said.

  “All of Faerie?”

  “If possible,” she said. “Otherwise, I’ll take the areas in current use. They’re mostly in the U.S., right?”

  That was what she had told Travers, but she hadn’t been certain. The problem with Faerie, aside from the fact that it was an artificial environment, was that it moved around all the time. What was true about it a month ago might not have been true about it yesterday.

  “What are you about, Zoe?” Elmer asked.

  “I’m working on a case,” she said, not lying.

  “I thought you had an aversion to Faerie.”

  “I do,” she said. “I’m going to try to complete this case without going in.”

  “Child, even if I give you the perfect spells, you’ll be under-magicked. Faerie is one of the most powerful places not on the planet.”

  “I know that,” Zoe said.

  “And the moment your magic touches it, the Faeries will know that you’re searching for something.”

  “I know that, too,” Zoe said.

  “They might not take too kindly to whatever it is you’re going to do.”

  “I’m not going to do anything.” She hoped.

  “You’re messing in things that are above both of us,” he said. “The wheel belonged to the Fates who work for the Powers That Be. It was stolen by the Faerie Kings so they could wrest power from the Great Rulers. The Faerie Kings believe their strength comes from that wheel. You cannot—dare not—touch it.”

  “Who said I’m going after the wheel?” Zoe asked.

  “Power vacuums. The world is whirling, young Zoe, and the magic is changing. The word is that the Fates will never return to their work and that Zeus already leads the Powers That Be. Aphrodite has lost, and the powers that have kept love in the mortal equation for centuries are gone.”

  “I hadn’t heard that,” Zoe said.

  “You don’t listen as closely as I do,” Elmer said.

  “It’s not your tradition,” Zoe said. “I would know.”

  Elmer shook his head. “You fail to realize, as all of you youngsters fail to realize, that the traditions come from the same source. It was political differences that gave us our warring philosophies, and the magicks developed by one culture are often in opposition to the magicks developed by another.”

  That made sense, even though Zoe hadn’t heard it before. Then a faint odor of burning leaves reached her, and she immediately thought of Travers.

  Elmer looked at the curtain. It was moving as if in a small wind.

  “You would like to help him,” Elmer said.

  Zoe shook her head, even though the very denial was a lie. “I’m here to talk with you. He’s strong enough to take care of himself.”

  “His magic is small and undeveloped. Forces older than both of us might like him to augment their power.”

  “He’ll be all right,” Zoe said, wondering if this was a test, and if so, what kind. To see how determined she was to preserve the romantic love her people were known for? Or to see if she could remain focused on her task, no matter what the distraction?

  “A map of Faerie,” Elmer said, returning to her original request, “will only show Faerie as it is this minute, and will be of no use to you.”

  “Don’t play games with me, Elmer,” Zoe said. “We both know that you can make an accurate map of Faerie that changes as Faerie changes.”

  Elmer’s lips thinned. “It will be costly.”

  Zoe nodded. “I’m prepared for that.”

  “I have no protection charms that work in Faerie,” he said.

  “That charm is not for Faerie,” Zoe said, not willing to explain more. She didn’t want him to know—if he didn’t already—that she was hiding the Fates.

  “Any charm I will give you will only protect once,” Elmer said.

  “That’s all I need,” Zoe said.

  He stood. “And the location spell? It is for Faerie, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “The magic will be traced to me. You know that?” Elmer said.

  “You already have an agreement with the Faeries,” Zoe said, “or you wouldn’t have so many magic items here.”

  Elmer looked at her sideways. His face had grown heavier, angrier, as if he hadn’t wanted her to know about his connection to Faerie.

  But she had been in Las Vegas long enough to hear of items lost in a Faerie casino that later appeared in Elmer’s back room. His connection to Faerie, whatever it was, was important to both sides.

  “How do you know my location spell can be trusted?” Elmer asked, voicing a thought that had hovered at the back of Zoe’s brain since she got this plan.

  “I don’t,” she said. “But I’m hoping it can be. After all, as you said, the world is changing. New alliances are being formed. You certainly wouldn’t want to be left out of the change, would you?”

  Elmer shrugged. “Modern politics doesn’t concern me.”

  “Unless it affects your livelihood,” Zoe said.

  Elmer glared at her.

  “I know people, too,” Zoe said. “Play fair with me and I’ll play fair with you.”

  Elmer’s stare was unnerving, but she met it. Finally, he looked away. His fingers brushed the table.
r />   On it, a Cubs baseball cap, a glowing tube, and a scrap of paper had appeared.

  “Last chance to change your mind, Zoe,” Elmer said.

  “I won’t change it,” she said. “Tell me how much all of this is.”

  “Your detection services for a case of my choosing at a time of my choosing,” he said.

  “Any time within the next hundred years,” Zoe added, not wanting to be indebted to him forever.

  “A thousand,” he said.

  “Five hundred,” she said.

  “Done,” he said, and she felt as if she had given in too easily. Still, she didn’t complain.

  Instead she looked at the items on the table. He handed her the baseball cap.

  “Your protection charm,” he said. “Be careful with it. Once the magic has fled, the cap itself is worth a great deal to baseball collectors. It’s old and important.”

  Zoe resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Most of the items that the Faerie collected in their totem search were sports-related. She never understood the power that people gave their special teams, nor did she understand the superstitious rituals that went with certain items.

  Obviously, this cap had some of that superstition believed into it, which made sense, considering it belonged to one of the losingest and yet most popular teams in baseball.

  She tucked the cap under her arm, knowing better than to put it on.

  Then he handed her the scrap of paper. It was small, barely the size of her palm, and the edges of it were brown as if it had been rescued from a fire.

  “Your spell,” Elmer said. “Keep it flat. Do not read it aloud, and make sure you’ve closed your eyes when you’ve thought the final word.”

  “All right,” Zoe said, taking the spell and letting it rest on her hand. The writing was old and spidery and looked to be in medieval Latin.

  “Finally,” Elmer said, picking up the tube, “your map. It will serve you for exactly one month. After that, its power will wane and it won’t be worth the paper it’s superimposed upon. Don’t look at it too much, or you’ll lose time. Don’t hold it too long, or you’ll end up at a place of the map’s choosing. Don’t try to extract the magic from the map, or it might kill you.”