Absolutely Captivated (24 page)

She kicked off her painful shoes and
walked barefoot across the shag carpet. The entry was the most
spectacular part of her house.

Designed for faculty parties, the
house had a number of features that made it the perfect home for
the UNLV basketball coach or provost. Not too far from the
university, but fancy enough to impress all those alums.

But the builder had forgotten that
university salaries, even in the cash-rich UNLV basketball program,
weren’t the same as, say, mobsters’ salaries, and the house had
remained empty until Zoe bought it, three years later.

Still, she loved the weird
opulence. In this, the entry and great room, the ceiling was high
enough for Kobe Bryant to stand on Shaquille O’Neal’s shoulders and
barely brush the painted wood. A minibar stood to the left of the
door, but there was nothing mini about it. Made of rich, dark wood,
the bar looked more like it had been stolen from the front of a
church than a place for people to enjoy drinks.

And then there was the fireplace. It
stood directly across from the door, and was lined in marble. The
fireplace was large enough for three witches and a caldron to stand
inside it—or three Fates and a cooking pot, at least.

Zoe shook her head. She
wasn’t going to get the Fates out of her mind as quickly as she had
hoped. She glanced at the grand piano, which was the final
finishing touch in this front room, and knew that playing wouldn’t
relax her tonight.

Nothing would, not even that hot bath
and book she had promised herself earlier.

She reset the alarm and walked through
the great room to the kitchen. She had remodeled the kitchen ten
years ago, but it was still small compared to the rest of the
house. She didn’t mind. She liked cozy, and she didn’t cook enough
to make an elaborate kitchen worthwhile.

She pulled open the
fridge, got out a fat-free strawberry yogurt drink, and sipped on
it while she turned on the radio. Soft jazz with a ’40s edge,
making her think of the days just after the war, when L.A. was
still a small town, and she was thinking of moving away from it,
thinking that she’d find less corruption somewhere else.

And, she had to admit, she was getting
away from yet another failed relationship, this one with a bookie
she’d met while on the job. Odd that after she had broken up with a
bookie, she had moved to a town that made its living off
gambling.

She had thought she had a lot in
common with the bookie—a taste for low life, but no urge to live
it; an understanding of the way the world worked, or didn’t; and a
willingness to put up with the seamier sides of a town that seemed
composed of seamy sides.

In the end, though, she realized that
what she had thought were compatible traits were simply excuses. He
liked her because she gave him legitimacy and she, in turn, had
used him for leads.

And then there had been the issue of
the magic.

He had none. And he had accidentally
found out about hers, creating a scene she’d never forget. He
wanted her to use it, to abuse it, to make them both rich, to make
them famous, to make them the couple of the century.

And he begged her for immortality, as
if that were in her power to give.

She was breaking up with
him when she had been summoned to the Fates, who reminded her about
the no-talking-to-mortals rule. Zoe had outlined what happened,
trying to make it clear that his discovery was an
accident.

She wasn’t ever sure if the Fates
believed her, but they didn’t punish her. They made it clear,
though, that future violations wouldn’t be tolerated.

They had scared her that day, and she
had believed them. She’d heard of their punishments—Sisyphus and
the rock was their idea, although no one remembered what the crime
had been—and she wanted nothing of it.

So she vanished from L.A.
Vanished and went to Vegas, but stubbornly did not change her
name.

Maybe she thought the bookie would
come looking for her, riding into the neon-coated streets in his
white convertible, a hero on a white horse.

But she never heard from
him again. And even though she dated, she never got involved again,
either. Better to keep her emotions in check then go through
another wrenching experience of a serious breakup for the umpteenth
time in a hundred years.

And now she had promised
to help Travers Kinneally. He wasn’t mortal, but he was the next
best thing—a man newly arrived in his magic. A man with eight years
of misunderstandings and mistakes behind him.

A man with an eleven-year-old son,
which made him a man with a history, although not a history as bad
as hers.

Zoe carried the yogurt drink into the
nearby half-bath and looked at herself in the mirror. She still
looked mid-thirties. No new wrinkles had appeared on her face since
Lincoln was president. She didn’t have any gray hairs, and she
worked hard to keep her figure without resorting to magical
treatments.

But even if she were to
take how old she looked, as opposed to how old she was, she was too
old for Travers. She had been over one hundred years old when
Travers Kinneally was born. When that sank in, what would he
think?

Modern American men had enough trouble
being younger than the women they dated. Imagine being this much
younger.

Then Zoe smiled, and the
crow’s feet she’d had since she got her magic reappeared like
valued old friends. She wasn’t going to date Travers Kinneally. She
was going to teach him. The way old crones were supposed to handle
young and studly men.

Zoe sighed, took another
sip of the artificially sweetened yogurt drink, and stepped out of
the bathroom. She wandered into the TV room, turned the jazz on in
here, and sank into her 1970s couch. Big as a single bed with
cushions that had only gotten softer with age, this couch was where
she went when she needed to think.

And she really needed to
contemplate all that she had learned this day—beyond Travers
Kinneally, who was a problem in and of himself.

“Aaaack! Where you been? Where you
been?” The voice sounded almost machine-like, but it belonged to
her temporary familiar, Black Bart. He sat on his perch near the
couch and peered down at her, his parrot’s eyes glittering as he
took her in.

“Working, Bart,” she said with a sigh.
She was glad that Black Bart was her temporary familiar—an Interim
Familiar, just like the Interim Fates, and just about as competent.
Fortunately, in the short term, she didn’t need a competent
familiar. She just needed one that would keep her magic pure, and
the familiar’s very presence did that.

Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been able
to use Black Bart as a substitute at all.

“Bartie like the Babe,” the bird said,
and hopped down to the side of the couch, wanting his feathers
stroked. He’d been saying that about babes ever since he met
Zoe.

The proprietor of the
magic store, who catered to both Faeries and mages, said Bart found
Zoe attractive. She certainly hoped that analysis was wrong—the
last thing she needed was a jealous parrot—but Bart certainly
seemed proprietary in his own little avian way.

What she needed was her own familiar,
not a borrowed one, and one of her many realizations today was that
she wouldn’t get her own familiar, not as long as the Interim Fates
were in office. They didn’t even know enough to clean up after a
rather panicked dachshund; they certainly wouldn’t know how to
create the perfect match between the right mage and the right
familiar.

“Babe need lunch?” Bart asked, which
was his way of asking if she would make any food soon. He usually
got a treat when she did, mostly to keep him quiet.

She did a lot to keep him
quiet.

“Not at the moment, Bart,” she said,
feeling lucky that he hadn’t heard her open the refrigerator door.
“Maybe later.”

“Later, later,
later,” he said, like a rejected child. She half expected him to
add,
it’s always later with
you
. But of course he didn’t. He might a
familiar, blessed with his own peculiar magic, but he couldn’t
really speak any more than any other familiar could. She would have
to spell him to give him a capacity beyond a normal
parrot’s.

Zoe leaned back in the couch, letting
the cushions envelope her. She put her bare feet on the coffee
table and closed her eyes. The Interim Fates had worried her, and
Nero had scared her. Partly because he had appeared so abruptly,
but mostly because of his own personal brand of
incompetence.

He had only a little magic—as
evidenced by his entrance—yet he was willing to use it to attack
the Fates. Fortunately, he wasn’t very bright, and Zoe had been
able to fool him.

But she might not be so lucky next
time.

And if something happened to the
Fates, then the mages would be stuck with the Interim Fates for
good.

So she had agreed to take the case,
against her better judgment. She didn’t want to be in the middle of
magical politics, but she felt like she had no choice.

Travers certainly couldn’t help the
Fates, even if he had wanted to, and getting them to someone
else—someone competent—might prove difficult. It wasn’t until after
Zoe had completed her disappearance spell that she realized what
danger she had put the Fates in.

She had held them in the magic stream
while she dealt with Nero. Someone else could have found them and
swept them along, and Zoe might never have been able to find
them.

It had taken nearly two
more hours, between her and Travers, to get the entire story of the
wheel out of the Fates. The women went through dozens of
digressions, and one small magic tutorial session for Kyle (who
seemed oblivious—only Travers seemed interested).

Finally, something like a
coherent story emerged: The wheel was a spinning wheel and, of
course, it had magic. Thousands of years ago, the Fates used it to
enhance their powers whenever they were called upon to administer
justice. The wheel increased the Fates’ ability a thousandfold, and
they needed it in those long-ago days.

At least, Clotho believed they needed
it. Lachesis didn’t, calling it a crutch, and Atropos tried to calm
the disagreement—one that had clearly been going on for
centuries.

Zoe put the heels of her hands against
her closed eyes. She couldn’t even think about the Fates without
going into a digression. They were rubbing off on her and she hated
it.

“Babe need a backrub?” Bart asked,
apparently sensing her distress.

“Babe needs a new life,” Zoe said
without opening her eyes.

“Backrub only,” Bart said, with his
uncanny ability to communicate.

“No thanks, kiddo,” Zoe said, and sank
deeper into the couch.

The wheel had disappeared
three thousand years ago. At least, the Fates thought it was about
three thousand years ago. Their sense of time was so fluid, though,
that Zoe couldn’t be sure if the wheel vanished a thousand years
ago, three thousand years ago, or last week.

Well, she was fairly certain that it
hadn’t disappeared last week since the Fates were already looking
for it then.

Still, she had never
worked on a case this old or one this cold. The Fates had done
nothing to find the wheel. They hadn’t used magic and they hadn’t
done the old-fashioned asking-around either.

They believed they knew what
happened.

At the time, the Faeries
and the mages were having a power struggle over dominion of the
mortals. (The Fates had a long digression over this: Lachesis had
called the conflict a war; Atropos had said it was merely a
struggle; and Clotho had called it unimportant.)

The Faeries were coming up
in importance—they were gaining footholds in parts of Europe that
the Fates couldn’t seem to touch—and they wanted even more power.
The Faerie Kings snuck into the Hall of Justice and made off with
the wheel.

At least, that was what Zoe thought
happened. The Fates had erupted into a very bitter, very personal
argument that had stopped as suddenly as it started. Travers had
given Zoe a perplexed look and she had shrugged.

She had never heard of the Fates
fighting before that night.

There was more to this Faerie King
story than the Fates were willing to admit.

The upshot, though, was
that the Fates had survived just fine without the wheel. It had
augmented their powers in the early days, but it hadn’t done much
once they learned how to control their own enhanced
magicks.

But the wheel had powers of its own,
powers that amplified—and sometimes created—magic where there was
none. And because the Fates had used the wheel in the past, they
had a tie to it.

The wheel could restore their magic,
not just at the level it was at before they gave it up, but
strengthened a thousand times. The Fates would be strong enough to
take on Zeus and any cohorts he had among the Powers That
Be.

And that was more than enough to get
Zoe to sign on—that, and the Interim Fates, and Nero.