Absolutely Captivated

by Grayson, Kristine

  The craps tables weren’t as full. In fact, only one had a full contingent of players. Most of those players were elderly as well. The Faeries were going to have to update their casinos at some point just to attract a younger crowd.

  But Zoe wasn’t going to tell them that. Like most of the magical, the Faeries rarely noticed how quickly mortal time passed. As far as the Faeries were concerned, these places were probably considered new.

  She hurried past the craps tables, nearly running into a cigarette girl wearing a short skirt and high heels and carrying a tray around her neck.

  Zoe stopped and gawked. She hadn’t seen an honest-to-goodness cigarette girl since 1970, and certainly not one this beautiful, ever. Of course, the girl’s raven-black hair was cut to hide her pointed ears, and her makeup covered the excesses of her eyebrows, but it was still hard to hide that other-worldly kind of beauty in common clothes.

  The girl saw Zoe, smiled, and said, “Cigar? Cigarillo? Cigarette?”

  “Ah, um, no, thank you,” Zoe said, feeling as if she’d stepped into a bad Bogart film. She hurried on, past the restrooms to the bar.

  Slot machines in the corner, video poker on the table, and only hard liquor against the walls. The cocktail waitresses, who cruised the aisles of the casino just like the cigarette girl, wore the same skimpy costume, but not all of them were Faerie. A few looked like regular mortals, only a little too thin.

  The entrance to Faerie was somewhere in here and, if her map was to be believed, the wheel wasn’t far away. She had to be alert to prevent herself from losing time, and she had to be cautious that she wouldn’t get lost.

  But she figured she had the element of surprise on her side. Herschel was more concerned about his motorcycle; he wouldn’t mention her interest in the wheel to anyone. And Gaylord had done his best to warn her away. He wouldn’t turn her in now.

  She hoped.

  She tried not to look too obvious as she rounded a corner and headed toward the buffet. The buffet smelled like congealed beef broth and week-old cooked carrots. A few patrons sat at the tables, stirring their food into mush. One woman plucked radishes cut in the shape of flowers off the salad bar, while she complained that there were no pickled beets.

  Zoe permitted herself one shudder for terrible 1950s meals gone by, and then slipped through the kitchen door, toward the back exit where the entrance to Faerie should be.

  She almost walked past it. There was a large closet, housing all of the cleaning equipment for the restaurant, and just beyond that, an ice machine that looked like it hadn’t worked since Truman was president.

  She touched the metal lid of the ice machine, and found that it was hot. Then she closed her eyes ever so slightly, saw the magical sparks that Gaylord and Herschel liked to talk about, and knew she had found the entrance.

  No one on the kitchen staff noticed her. In fact, they hadn’t even seen her enter the room, which was just as well. She made a slight invisibility shield around herself as she lifted the lid on the ice machine.

  It looked like an empty metal chest. The bottom seemed solid enough. But she leaned over the edge and tried to touch the metal, and found her hand slipping across nothing.

  She hoisted herself over the lip and then slid into the chest, falling down a metal slide like she was at a water park—only worse. She twisted and rolled and spun and the world got very, very dark, and very, very cold.

  She could hear laughter and the ka-chink! ka-chink! of slot machines grow louder and louder, and then she realized that no one was speaking English. They were all speaking Faerie.

  Her heart nearly stopped. She had to concentrate to keep breathing. She kept falling, feeling more and more lightheaded, and knew that if she passed out, that would be the end of everything.

  She had to hold on, and she had to stay awake, and she had to pay attention.

  Because she would only get one chance at this, and she had to do it right.

  Thirty-eight

  Somehow Travers managed to get most of the story out of Gaylord, and it hadn’t taken all night. Apparently a week with the Fates had been good for something.

  What Travers couldn’t understand was why Zoe had decided to go into Faerie at all. She hadn’t planned to. She had been adamantly against it.

  All Gaylord had said was that she saw some profit in it.

  Profit wasn’t a major motivation for Zoe, so Travers wasn’t exactly sure what was going on. He actually figured he needed the Fates’ help. They probably knew a spell or two, which they could explain to him, that might show him where Zoe was.

  Or, worst case, prove to him that Gaylord was lying.

  Travers picked up the phone, dialed the Fates’ room, and asked them to come to his. He had a hunch Zoe wouldn’t approve of his methods, but he couldn’t think of anything else to do.

  The Fates arrived in record time, at least for them. It only took them fifteen minutes from the phone call to their knock on the door. During that time, Travers had to prove to Gaylord that the refrigerator had no beer, and he had to try to convince him that they didn’t have time to order any from room service.

  Fang never stopped growling, and Travers made certain he never mentioned his precious son, asleep in the next room.

  Finally, Gaylord confessed that he hadn’t seen either Harry Potter movie, so Travers ordered up the movies again, not certain how long it would take the Fates to arrive.

  In the meantime, he paced and thought and paced and thought, and actually wished he knew more about magic than he did. He would be able to know what was going on with Zoe, then, and he wouldn’t have to rely on anyone else.

  When the Fates knocked, he opened the door, put a finger to his lips, and mouthed, Don’t say who you are.

  Clotho mouthed, Okay, but Travers wasn’t really sure she understood him.

  Then he introduced them to Gaylord as three friends of his and Zoe’s.

  “Zoe never mentioned any of you,” Gaylord said, still staring at the television.

  Travers shut off the TV.

  “Hey!” Gaylord said. “That’s not very fair. Now I’ll never know if the kid zaps his aunt and uncle into oblivion.”

  “Trust me,” Lachesis said, “that odious pair shows up in every book.”

  “At least through number four,” Atropos said. “We haven’t read number five yet.”

  Travers looked at them in surprise. He had no idea they were Harry Potter fans. It just went to show that every person on the planet had read a J.K. Rowling novel. Every person, that is, except Gaylord.

  “You can watch it later,” Travers said to Gaylord. “I’ll even buy you a copy if your story holds up.”

  “Holds up?” He gathered his knees against his chest. “What do you mean, holds up?”

  “I can’t go running off to help Zoe without confirmation,” Travers said.

  “You have magic,” Gaylord said. “You should’ve checked.”

  Travers looked at the Fates. “I don’t know the spell.”

  Clotho tsk-tsked at him. “Do a simple locate.”

  “A what?” Travers asked.

  “Make a fist,” Gaylord said, “then snap up the fingers, and think of the person. You should get a trail of light.”

  “You Faeries do everything backwards,” Lachesis said. “You think of the person first, then snap your fingers, and then you’ll find yourself wherever that person is.”

  “Which isn’t a really good spell if the person is in trouble,” Gaylord said. “Then suddenly you’re in the middle of trouble and you’re of no use to them.”

  He scooted to the edge of the couch, and frowned at Travers.

  “I don’t get it,” Gaylord said. “You could’ve just asked me to prove that she’s going off to Faerie.”

  “But you’re the one who told me,” Travers said.

  “So?” Gaylord said.

  “I heard that Faeries were tricksters,” Travers said. “How could I believe that you’d tell me true?”

  “Not
all Faeries are tricksters,” Atropos said. “Some are very nice people.”

  “Some are even great people,” Clotho said.

  “Some are even greater than people,” Lachesis said.

  Gaylord was staring at them. “You know, you ladies look familiar. What did you say your names were?”

  All three Fates stiffened, as if they’d been caught being bad. “You know,” Atropos said to Travers, “you can try Gaylord’s method. Your magic isn’t settled yet. You might achieve a Faerie spell with great ease.”

  “And it does make more sense to follow light than to get into the thick of things,” Clotho said.

  “Although I do believe this boy is telling you true,” Lachesis said. “He’s always had a mage-like heart.”

  “What?” Gaylord said. “I could take that as an insult, you know.”

  Travers was shaking. He didn’t want to lose track of Zoe in all of this bickering.

  “Okay,” he said to Gaylord, “walk me through this.”

  “He can’t,” Atropos said. “If he so much as touches you, the spell becomes his, not yours.”

  “You have a good memory, Travers,” Clotho said. “Just do what he told you.”

  Travers thought of Zoe, made a fist, and opened it quickly, snapping his fingers as he did so. A ray of light beamed across the room, drilled a hole through the wall, and traveled across Las Vegas. The light veered south, down the Boulder Highway, to a group of seedy looking casinos.

  “Stop it!” Gaylord said. “Stop it now!”

  “You’d better stop it,” Lachesis said. “He’s exactly right.”

  But Travers didn’t know how to stop it. The light traveled inside the casino, to the kitchen, and into an ice machine. Travers got a sense of Zoe, and then Gaylord hit his hand.

  The light vanished.

  “Idiot!” Gaylord said. “You never do mage magic in a Faerie building.”

  “Now they’ll change the doorway,” Atropos said.

  “And they might catch Zoe,” Clotho said.

  “We have to do something,” Lachesis said. “And quickly.”

  Thirty-nine

  Zoe landed with a thud on a carpeted floor. The tube that had deposited her disappeared as quickly as it opened up.

  She found herself in the middle of a casino, only one unlike any she’d ever seen.

  The lights were brighter, the noise louder, and the people weren’t mortal at all. They were all Faerie, and they all seemed to be having an excellent time.

  She didn’t recognize the games, either. Most of them resembled slot machines, but the display panels had actual places on them. It looked like the Faeries were betting on real people’s lives, on their next actions, on their personal choices.

  There were also historical reenactment machines for Faeries who wanted to bet on the path of alternate histories (even though they really couldn’t change the past—that instruction was on top of the machine in big bold letters: anyone who monkeyed with the past would be put to death).

  And large signs with pointing fingers showed the way to various other parts of the casino—the theater, the comedy club, the bar, the restaurant, and, what seemed to be the biggest draw, the collectible pit.

  Zoe had no idea where to start.

  She was dizzy and sore and very tired. She could feel the energy all around her, and it unnerved her. The magic she felt clearly came from a different place than her own.

  She stood, rubbed her backside, and wondered if she should ask directions. More and more Faeries were looking at her. Her heart was pounding hard, and she was trying not to think of the prophecy, of losing herself in here.

  She was more afraid of getting lost. She couldn’t see the signs anymore. They seemed to have shifted, to have moved in different directions.

  The slot machines had grown taller, and she felt like Alice in Wonderland. She needed a potion that would make her larger, so she could see over the slots.

  But she didn’t dare do magic in here. Her kind of magic would call attention to itself, and she was horribly outnumbered. She had to find all of this on her own.

  She came to a fork in the bank of slot machines. A new sign, looking like it had been made from sticks, had arrows pointing in all different directions, including up. The instructions told her about various portions of the casino, and then one said quite simply: The Circle.

  The Circle. The Faerie Circle. Where the Great Rulers used to sit and rule the Great Race of Faerie. Where the Faerie Kings overthrew the Great Rulers and started their own customs and traditions.

  Where, possibly, the wheel might be.

  She tried not to feel too excited about this. The arrow wasn’t that clear. It seemed to point past a bank of slots that guided the careers of old Rock ’n Roll stars, but when she looked at the arrow again, it seemed to point toward a sign advertising Vaudeville Night at the Comedy Club.

  Some of the names on the sign were vaguely familiar, and she hoped the first two ideas that popped into her head were wrong. She didn’t want to see that the old vaudeville stars had been lured down here to perform nearly a century ago, when vaudeville was dying, and they were still doing that or that a lot of Faeries were vaudeville stars and hadn’t given it up.

  Zoe glanced at the Circle arrow again, and it was gone.

  She had to think. Either the wheel was in the direction of the Rock ’n Roll slots or it was near the vaudeville performers.

  Or it was directly in front of her, and someone was trying to trick her.

  Of course they were trying to trick her. She was in Faerie.

  She took a deep breath and headed straight forward, down an aisle of video poker machines that when she looked at them, she realized weren’t video poker at all. They had the names of credit card companies on the top, and the names of credit card holders on the side, and the Faeries set the going interest rate. Every time a consumer paid with plastic the Faerie in front of the machine got a small payoff.

  Zoe shuddered, and then watched, almost mesmerized, as the rates kept going up and up. She thought she saw the name of someone she recognized, and that pulled her out of the reverie.

  She didn’t want to be here any longer than necessary.

  She had to remember why she was here: it wasn’t for the Fates or for the money. It was for Travers and Kyle and the bond between them. It was for love—especially true love, which she might feel but never get to act on.

  It was for the world as she knew it, the world that she loved. The last thing she wanted was for these tricksters to have control of the emotions of the people around her. The good emotions.

  It seemed that Faerie already had control of some of the baser ones.

  She hurried down the aisle toward a glow that rose in the distance. So far, no one in Faerie seemed to notice her.

  She had no idea how long that luck would hold.

  Forty

  Travers drove his SUV along East Tropicana Boulevard, amazed at the speeds he could achieve in the middle of the night. He felt like Zoe, driving well beyond the speed limit. Only she always seemed invulnerable when she did it. He felt like a kid whose father was going to catch him and punish him.

  Gaylord didn’t help. He was crouched in the passenger seat, his hands over his eyes. He claimed he hated combustion-engine vehicles. If he was going to go more than three miles an hour, he’d do it with his own wings, thank you.

  But the Fates convinced him to go with Travers, and they convinced Travers not to use too much magic in arriving at the casino that currently housed Faerie. The Fates were afraid that the entrance might shift, and then where would he be?

  He wasn’t sure what that meant, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to find out. He only knew that for some reason that he didn’t fully understand, Zoe had taken it upon herself to go into Faerie. She went without warning anyone and she went without backup, and he was afraid that her prophecy would come true.

  He was afraid she wouldn’t get out.

  Travers had to go around a pic
kup that was crawling along the side of the road. That was the only traffic he’d seen for at least a mile. Theoretically, Gaylord was mentally trolling for cop cars, but Travers wasn’t sure Gaylord knew what a cop car was. He seemed a lot more knowledgeable about modern culture than the Fates until you pressed him, and then it became clear that he only cared about the surface and not what was beneath it.

  Before he left, Travers had called Megan and asked her to hurry, saying he would have to go out on an emergency, and that three very strange friends of his were baby-sitting Kyle.

  Travers also made it clear that he didn’t want these friends baby-sitting Kyle for long, so when Megan arrived, she could take Travers’ bed. Travers left a key for her at the front desk with more warnings about the Fates (get them out of the room as fast as possible; try not to wake Kyle; don’t answer most of Kyle’s questions—let Travers do that; and remember that Kyle has been sick, just in case his conversation sounds a bit…disjointed).

  Travers didn’t know how to cover his butt any other way. He had wanted to ease his sister into this world slowly, maybe not expose her to it at all, and now he wouldn’t be able to. She would have too many questions for him to answer, and he had no idea how to do so.

  His palms were sweating on the steering wheel. The lights along the boulevard seemed bright. The university looked alive and glowy, despite the late hour. The Liberace Museum seemed to be the only place that wasn’t open—which Liberace himself would probably have found strange.

  Then Gaylord grabbed his arm. The movement was so quick, and Gaylord’s grasp so fierce, that Travers swerved, nearly lost control, and had to fight to get back to his side of the road.

  Fortunately Tropicana was still mostly empty. One other SUV saw his maneuver, and honked as it went by.

  “What the hell?” Travers said. “You never grab a driver.”