Fourteen
Suddenly he was back there, the place he never really wanted to be ever again.
The day that Marian died.
Only he wasn’t really there. He was standing outside it, like an observer of his own life, and this other woman was beside him, holding his hand.
They stood in the kitchen, but they could see through the doorway into the bedroom. He had forgotten how small and mean the rooms were. The cottage was made of thatch, and smelled like old hay mixed with sickness and spoiling meat. Two wooden bowls sat on the table, both filled with an oily stew that no one had touched.
He remembered making it, just like he remembered trying to choke it down, even when Marian hadn’t been able to eat any at all. She had wrinkled her nose and turned away.
She looked so tiny on their bed, her white hair strewn across the blanket he had folded up to form a kind of pillow. The mattress was stuffed with hay as well and had been very uncomfortable. To this day, he remembered how it felt to roll over at night, only to have a sharp straw poke him in the side.
Her breath was weak and rattly, her eyes rheumy, her hand clinging to his. He stared at himself, looking only a few years younger than he did now, and so devastated. Had he really looked that broken? She wasn’t even dead yet, but he knew she was going to die.
The Fates had already ruled that he could do nothing about it. They had reversed the spell he had cast, the spell that had brought her back to her younger, healthier self. And they had erased her memory of those few days. As far as she had known, she had been in that bed for weeks, dying by inches, her young-looking husband still at her side.
She had liked his magic. She had found his forever youth intriguing. Unlike the woman who currently clung to his hand, Marian had always believed the world had a touch of magic. She had been happy to learn that Robin held a piece of it, even at the end, when it couldn’t save her.
“Your mother?” Megan asked him.
Rob glanced at her. Her eyes were lined with tears. She understood the scene before her without him even explaining it—all except one piece.
“My wife,” he said. “My mortal wife.”
How he hated that word “mortal.” Technically, he was mortal too, but not in the same fragile way that Marian had been.
Megan said nothing else. She just observed as his younger self bathed Marian’s face.
Marian had reached up and touched his younger self’s face. He still remembered how her hand felt—like the finest crystal, about to break with a single touch—and cold, oh so very cold.
“You did what you could,” she whispered. “Take comfort in that.”
Instead of watching, Rob turned away. He didn’t need to see this again. It was burned in his brain.
His younger self had shaken his head, and she had smiled at him. Her smile had never changed. It was always fond and warm and so full of love.
“I’ll love you forever,” she whispered.
And then she died.
He made a small sound, tried to step away from the old memory, and nearly tripped over a newspaper. Somehow he had spelled himself and Megan back to her condo.
His magic hadn’t been this out of control since he had first discovered he had it, in the middle of that damn Crusade, in a land that it seemed like everyone had called Holy.
“My God,” Megan said softly. “You never got over her.”
He raised his gaze to hers. Her eyes were filled with the most amazing compassion. She understood. No one he had ever told had understood.
People had always told him that a man should have gotten over losing a loved one after so many years. It was only natural, right?
He couldn’t say anything. There was nothing to say, really.
Megan kept ahold of his hand. “But I don’t understand how the Fates were involved in this.”
“They wouldn’t let me save her.” His voice was husky. He swallowed, cleared it. “They said it was wrong.”
Their words still echoed, even now: We cannot allow love to violate the rules of existence.
“Why?” Megan obviously had heard that echo. She had heard it, just like she had entered his bubble.
What was this connection between them?
“They said it took the world out of balance, and the world would find hideous ways to come back into balance. They said a few mages had tried this before, and the world had found hideous ways to come back, and they didn’t want that to happen again.” He didn’t look at her as he said that. His voice shook.
“As if that mattered to you,” Megan said.
“Precisely.” He spoke with a little too much force.
“So they let her die,” Megan said.
He shook his head. “They reversed my spell. It was a deliberate act. They killed her. They didn’t let her die. They took an action that made her die.”
“Changing what you had done,” Megan said.
“Because they said it was wrong.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, as if she were absorbing his words. Then she shook her head, frowned, and opened her eyes.
“Have you seen them since?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “Of course not.”
“Until today.”
“Yeah.” He whispered because he no longer trusted his voice. He was afraid it would break. If it broke, he might lose what little grip he had on himself.
“When they came, asking for a favor.”
“Yeah.”
Megan’s lips thinned. “That is so wrong.”
His gaze met hers and then, despite himself, he smiled. It was wrong. But she had expressed her objection in such a thoroughly modern manner that her words brought him back to the present.
“No wonder you locked them in a room,” she said. “I might have killed them with my own bare hands.”
“Do that to the Fates,” he said, “and you’d be imprisoned forever.”
Megan sighed. “I really don’t understand this new world, do I?”
His smile grew fond. “But you’re beginning to.”
She smiled back at him. She had no idea how beautiful she was and he loved that. Too much, these days, women knew exactly how attractive they were.
Then Megan broke the eye contact. Her cheeks were slightly flushed. “My nephew says they’ve lost their magic. Would they still be dangerous without it?”
“Lost their magic.” Rob shook his head. Both the Fates and John had mentioned that, but he hadn’t believed it. “It could be some sort of test.”
“Why would they test you?”
He shrugged. “I’ve never responded to any of their summonses in the past. Maybe they decided to come to me.”
“To ask a favor,” Megan said, as if she were thinking about it.
Now it was his turn to sigh. He didn’t owe them anything. And the idea of a test didn’t really ring true to him. The Fates were devious and they lacked a sense of time, but they usually played with emotional things, not spinning wheels.
If they were messing with him, they’d be doing something with true love and death, not spinning wheels and little children.
“How long have you known the Fates?” he asked.
Megan gathered the last of the newspapers and clutched them to her chest. “About twelve hours.”
“About twelve…?” he let his voice trail off. “My heavens. And you’re here?”
“My brother is getting a marriage license. He’s not in the mood to help the Fates any more. Technically, all I’m supposed to be doing is baby-sitting Kyle.” Then her mouth opened slightly. “Kyle! I left him there. We have to go back!”
“He’ll be fine,” Rob said.
She shook her head. “I don’t know your friend John, and the Fates are locked up and Kyle might just take matters into his own hands.”
Rob wanted to tell her that John was very capable. In fact, he had an innate understanding of children, which Rob had always relied on.
But he didn’t say anything. Instead, he snapped h
is fingers again, taking the two of them back to the office.
As they shifted, he felt an acute sense of disappointment. He wanted to be alone with her.
Maybe this was Fate-caused. Maybe this woman was his test, not the silly spinning wheel.
And then he was back in the reception area, Megan beside him. The young boy, Kyle, sprinted across the room and wrapped his arms around her, shooting Rob an angry glance.
John had a bemused expression on his face. He was looking at Rob and Megan fondly, as if he couldn’t quite believe Rob had taken her away.
The door to Rob’s office rattled, and muted female voices cried out, their words muffled by the door’s thickness.
“You’re not upset,” Kyle said to his aunt as he stepped back slightly from the hug.
Her gaze met Rob’s. He felt a shared moment in that look, as if what he had told her made her value him. His heart fluttered, and he wished it would remain still.
He didn’t want to find any other woman attractive.
He didn’t want to feel that heady, almost giddy feeling of someone in the first stages of courtship.
“Mr—Hood?—was trying to help me understand this magic you’re all talking about,” Megan said.
“Chapeau,” Rob said. “I’m Rob Chapeau.”
Her eyes widened slightly, and that flush she’d had became a full-blown blush.
She obviously recognized the name. She hadn’t put two and two together before, but she had now.
He cursed that media image John had insisted on creating for him. The billionaire playboy, the one who hadn’t cared about anything.
It was so far from the truth, but it enabled him to walk in circles that he wouldn’t get into otherwise.
“Chapeau Enterprises.” Her voice was cold. “Forgive me. I had somehow missed that you were the Chapeau.”
The way she said it made him feel ridiculous. The chapeau. As if he were nothing more than a hat to her.
“It’s not like it seems,” he said.
“Well, you’ve proven to me that nothing is.” She kept her hand on her nephew’s shoulder, but she pulled all the way out of the hug. “You and Kyle and those three women and my goofy brother. Are you all trying some kind of upscale David Copperfield thing? Am I the preferred guinea pig? Is that why Travers has been calling me for the last few days? Did he give you pictures of my condo? Is that how it worked?”
The boy was frowning. John’s smile had grown, just a little, and he crossed his massive arms. The door rattling had become door banging.
“I don’t know any Travers,” Rob said.
“He doesn’t, Aunt Meg,” Kyle said. “He really isn’t trying to trick you either.”
She looked at her nephew, then back at Rob. “Rob Chapeau, according to the press—”
“Is a manipulative man who doesn’t care how he makes his money,” Rob said. “Does that sound like Robin Hood to you?”
“Maybe you’ve given up on the nobler parts of the legend,” she said. “Maybe it’s the party side that continued to appeal to you. Or did you just think you’d rather be on the side of the winners?”
He winced when she said that. It echoed words he’d used throughout the centuries—how he hated that the cheaters, liars, and destroyers were often the ones on the top of the heap, either in wealth or power or both.
“Rob has never been what he seemed,” John said, moving forward to physically insert himself into the conversation. “He’s always been something other. Even back in Sherwood, he maintained a duel identity. He was born into privilege, and could have lived that way despite what the sheriff and King John were doing. Or didn’t you know that part of the legend?”
Her face didn’t soften, but her eyes did. Those compassionate eyes.
Rob frowned. She had almost disappeared in those moments when he’d been telling her about Marian (and what was that about? He never told any other woman he’d been near—let alone the ones he’d been involved with—about Marian. These days, only John knew. John and those horrible women still locked in Rob’s office). Megan had become the perfect listener in those moments, almost as if she could absorb his pain into herself.
It was when the attention focused on her that she became unsettled. When she thought someone was deliberately making a fool of her.
She had been hurt, too, and no one had ever noticed.
“I’m not making fun of you,” he said gently. “This isn’t a scam that anyone planned with me. Those are the Fates in my office, and I’m not some billionaire playboy testing a new entertainment system.”
Although he was richer than he liked. It was necessary for the work he did. Most of the money he made, however, went into the various corporations that he ran, which then distributed it to worthy causes around the globe.
“I think you should let the Fates out of your office,” she said quietly. “I’ll take them back to the hotel.”
The door truly was banging now. Eventually, those three women would get it open from sheer force of will.
“It won’t be that easy.” John cast a wary eye on the door.
It actually might be since it was becoming clearer and clearer that the Fates had no magic. And with no magic, they were truly vulnerable to those who hated them. Rob could control them if he wanted, with just the flick of a finger.
He wouldn’t, of course. It wasn’t his way.
But he knew a lot of mages who didn’t have those qualms.
A movement caught the corner of his eye. Young Kyle was nodding. When Kyle saw Rob looking at him, Kyle said, “I’ve seen mages try to hurt them. Zoe protected them. My Uncle Dex did before.”
Rob didn’t have to be psychic to understand the implications of that sentence. Now, for some reason, the Fates expected him to help them.
“You help other people,” Kyle said, as if he and Rob had been having an out-loud discussion.
“Needy people,” Rob said.
Megan was watching him. Her right hand still rested securely on Kyle’s shoulder. She clearly didn’t follow all of the conversation, but she was paying attention.
“The Fates are needy,” Kyle said.
“The Fates are bossy, and they don’t understand anything, and they hurt people, young man. The sooner you learn that—”
“They’re here to learn how to be better Fates.” The boy’s voice rose. “That’s why they gave up their magic, so they could learn diplomacy and how to be helpless, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Then they found out that it was all a scam, and they’d been made fools of so that Zeus could put his daughters in as Fates—”
“Which daughters?” Rob asked. “Athena wouldn’t be bad at it.”
Megan’s eyebrows rose. That was the second time he’d seen her do that, and he was beginning to like it. It gave her face even more warmth.
“I don’t know,” Kyle said. “You’d have to ask the Fates.”
“I’m not talking with them,” Rob said.
“Rob, you have to.” John extended his meaty hands. “If they get back into power—”
“I’ll worry about it then.” He was about to spell the Fates somewhere else when he caught Megan’s eye.
That amusing eyebrow-raised expression was gone, replaced by one of concern.
“What?” he asked, trying not to snap at her. He liked her too much to snap at her. And she was sensitive about things aimed at her. He didn’t want to hurt her in any way.
She took a deep breath. Kyle grinned up at her as if he already knew what she was going to say. And, of course, he did.
“Your…intervention,” she said, obviously choosing her word with great caution, “…leads me to believe that there is magic in the world. And if there is—”
“There is,” John growled.
She ignored him. Rob understood her caution. She was still feeling her way in this new world.
“If there is,” she repeated, “then it sounds to me like something major is going on in your government. The Fates are part of your governmen
t, right?”
“Right.” Rob didn’t like them or what they stood for, but they were part of the ruling class.
Of course, he’d always had his issues with the ruling class.
“Then,” she said just as slowly, just as gently, “you might want to talk to them and intervene. Not to help them, but to help your people.”
“My people.” His gaze met John’s. John closed his eyes and shook his head. Megan didn’t know—she couldn’t know—how that phrase had backfired on him over the years.
First, his people had been the peasants in Nottingham, and he had done his best to save them. His men, they too were his people, and it had taken all his cunning to keep them alive.
When it became clear that he couldn’t, he joined Richard the Lionhearted in his crusade against the infidels, only to learn that there weren’t infidels, only different systems of belief, and that the people he’d always thought of as his people were really very different from him.
They had no magic, and he did.
He was part of a special class after all.
And, as he had always done, he eventually rejected that class, and used his powers to help those less fortunate without resorting to ruling them, directing them, or controlling them.
His people.
He had no people. He wanted no people. He only wanted to live his life his way.
“Good argument, Aunt Megan,” Kyle whispered. “But it probably wasn’t the most effective.”
She shrugged and smiled at the boy. Her love for him was so obvious that it made Rob’s heart twist. So many children didn’t have that kind of love.
“Then what would be effective?” she whispered back, even though she glanced sideways at Rob, and clearly knew he was listening.
The boy squared his shoulders and turned to Rob. “The Fates say that true love is at stake. For some people, love is all they get. They don’t get money, they don’t get superpowers, they just get love. You want to make that go away? Because the Fates say that’s what’ll happen if you don’t help them.”
Rob felt that heat rise in his face again.
“I’d hear them out, boss,” John said, putting the sarcastic emphasis on “boss” that he’d been using for the last century or so.
Totally Spellbound Page 9
