Absolutely Captivated (27 page)

Travers walked over
to the DVDs and picked one up. “The first season of
CSI
?” he said with a
frown. “Who are they kidding?”

Kyle joined him.

“Look,” Kyle said,
crouching next to the stack and pulling some videotapes from behind
it. “A whole set of
City
Confidential
, and
American Justice
.”

“What are they looking for?” Travers
asked.

“I’m not sure we need to know,” Zoe
said.

He looked at her as if he were seeing
her for the first time. His eyes were electric, and they sent a
charge through her every time they met hers. She felt her heart
rate increase, and hoped the changes in her breathing weren’t
obvious to anyone but herself.

Is everything
okay?
she mouthed toward him, and nodded
at Kyle.

Travers
shrugged.
Tell you
later
, he mouthed back.

A crunching sound came from behind
her. Zoe turned in time to see Bartholomew inhale the last pizza
crust.

“Oh, man,” Travers said. “He’s going
to be sick later.”

“I don’t know,” Zoe said. “He’s an
eating machine.”

“Wonderful,” Travers said. “So nice of
you to share him.”

Even though his tone was dry, he
smiled, and she felt weak in the knees. She also felt a surge of
anger at her own susceptibility to him. She had resolved to keep
her distance the night before, but apparently her body hadn’t
gotten the message.

“Listen,” Travers said. “I’ve been
thinking about the training and the case and I realized no one
talked with you about money.”

Zoe shrugged. She hadn’t expected to
be paid, once she figured out that she really was working for the
Fates.

They had switched, somewhere in the
last few minutes, to “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree (with Anyone
Else but Me)” which was marginally less annoying, only because they
were mispronouncing fewer words.

“We’re all going to be taking a lot of
your time, and I think you’ll need to be compensated—”

“It’s all right,” Zoe said.

“No, it’s not.” Travers was cute when
he was concerned. “The Fates can’t pay you, but I can
and—”

“It’s all right,” Zoe
repeated.

“No, seriously—”

“Seriously,” Zoe said, feeling more
annoyed than she should have. He wanted to be fair to her, after
all, and she wasn’t allowing it. “I can’t accept money for
training. No mentor does.”

“But—”

“And as for the case, for all I know,
this still might be a test on the part of the Fates.”

“You think the Interim Fates were
fake?” Kyle asked from the floor. He was still going through the
piles of videos and DVDs.

“I don’t know what to think,” Zoe
said. “So it’s better if I just play this straight.”

“Which would seem to me that you’d
need compensation,” Travers said. “It’s unusual for you not to take
payment for your detective work, right?”

Zoe held up a hand. “It’s my decision.
I’m not hurting for money.”

“And as for being my mentor,” Travers
began.

“Yes?” Zoe’s hands clenched, and she
had to will them apart. She didn’t want him to change anything, and
yet she wanted everything changed. She wasn’t being as rational as
she liked this morning, and it was irritating her.

“I thought we’d agreed that I just
needed some tricks so that I could get to Oregon.”

“You don’t want me as a mentor?” she
asked, and then wished she could take the words back. They sounded
bitchier than she intended. Mostly, she was trying to
clarify.

At least, she thought she
was.

But with her emotions all over the
place, she wasn’t sure what she was doing.

Except that she had been fine before
he had arrived. Calm, planning ahead, barely annoyed at all by the
Fates’ mess and their lack of timing.

“I didn’t say that,” Travers said. “I
thought we decided yesterday that it was better for me not to take
too much of your time.”

“I thought we decided that we’d decide
later,” Zoe said. “Once you figured out what you needed to do for
yourself and for Kyle.”

“No one ever exactly said that.” Kyle
paused in his sorting of the videos. “You both thought it, but no
one actually said it.”

He would be useful to have around.
Useful and unnerving.

Still, Zoe smiled at him. “Thanks,
Kyle. Why don’t we leave things that way? We need to get started
today anyway.”

“I thought the Fates’ case
took priority,” Travers said.

“It does.” Zoe bent over
and grabbed one of the blankets. As she started folding it, Cheetos
fell out. Those women were going to have to start watching their
figures now that they didn’t have the magic to maintain them. But
she wasn’t going to be the one to tell them.

“Then I don’t understand,” Travers
said. “How will you do both?”

“There’s no formal program.” Zoe
folded the blanket and set it on the couch. Then she grabbed the
next blanket, this time shaking it to rid it of its
Cheetos.

Oh, the maid was going to love this
room.

“So?” Travers asked.

“So you’ll learn as the day
progresses. Whatever happens to us will give me a chance to train
you.”

Travers glanced at Kyle. He was
reading the back of a video, and didn’t seem to be listening.
Although Zoe had a hunch that boy heard more than he let
on.

“Um, if I go anywhere with you, Kyle
will have to as well.”

Zoe shook her head. “I did
some Internet research on that wheel this morning. The places we’re
going to go, you can’t take an eleven-year-old.”

“I’ll stay in the car,” Kyle
said.

“Even then.” Zoe folded the blanket
and set it next to the first one.

“We’re going to have to find another
way,” Travers said. “I can’t leave him alone.”

“You could leave him with the Fates,”
Zoe said.

Travers raised his eyebrows as if she
had suggested leaving his son with a group of well-known cannibals.
“And who would take care of all of them?”

“The Fates are older than all of us
combined, and they have run an entire justice system. They know a
lot about crime and punishment and—”

“And magic,” Travers said. “And they
have evil mages after them, they’ve lost a spinning wheel, and they
don’t know what a dollar bill is. They’re not appropriate guardians
for my son.”

Zoe took a deep breath, trying to keep
herself calm. If Kyle were her son, she’d be just as worried about
him. But there were other considerations, ones that Travers didn’t
know about.

“Let me take your concerns in reverse
order,” Zoe said. “First, Kyle knows what a dollar bill is, so
he’ll be able to help the Fates with the practical modern stuff.
You and I are going to search for the wheel, and the faster we find
it, the faster all of us can leave each other’s
company.”

She hadn’t meant for that
sentence to have as much bite as she put into it. It made her sound
like she didn’t want to be with him, either, which wasn’t
true.

“And finally,” she said, “I’ve taken
care of the mages, at least for a couple of days.”

“What if you’re wrong,”
Travers said. “It’s my son’s life you’re risking, and the Fates
can’t do any of that stuff you did yesterday to save him. What’re
they going to do, get hotel security because some evil magician
tries to kidnap them?”

“They’re not as helpless as you
think,” Zoe said. “They do know how magic works, even if they can’t
practice it themselves right now. They survived with you and Kyle
before either of you knew about their powers. I think they’ll be
just fine with Kyle, and he won’t be in any danger.”

“But you don’t know that,” Travers
said. “You’re asking me to risk Kyle’s life on a guess.”

Zoe felt her cheeks heat. What was it
about this man that had revived her talent for blushing?

“So we’re at a stalemate. Either Kyle
comes with us, or you go off on the case alone,” Travers said, “and
train me at some other point.”

The music stopped. The air rang with
the echoing last chord. The Fates weren’t bad musicians; they just
weren’t very good with lyrics.

Kyle had set the last video down. He
stood beside the television, looking as uncertain as he had at the
door. Something had bothered him this morning, and Zoe couldn’t
tell what it was.

“Kyle,” she said, “has anyone trained
you to project?”

“Huh?” he asked.

“To send your thoughts, like a shout,
into someone else’s mind?”

Kyle shook his head
slowly, as if the idea of anyone training him at all—maybe even
noticing him—was foreign to him.

“Can I teach you?” Zoe
asked.

“To what purpose?” Travers
asked.

“To great purpose,” Zoe said. “He
should have learned this one long ago.”

Travers crossed his arms, and Zoe got
the sense that he interpreted her words as a criticism of his
parenting.

“Unlike mortal children,” Zoe said,
“Kyle doesn’t need to carry a phone to stay in touch. If he’s in
trouble, he can project his need for help to you—like a shout over
a very long distance. Once you learn how to use your own magic, you
can transport from wherever you are to wherever he is, taking care
of the problem right away.”

Travers’ shoulders relaxed, and he
glanced at Kyle. “Really? He can do that?”

“Anyone with his powers can do that,”
Zoe said. “He just has to know how to use them.”

Bartholomew had stopped eating pizza
crusts and had waddled to the center of the conversation, sitting
near Travers as if Bartholomew were protecting Travers from Zoe.
Zoe would have thought it cute if Bartholomew hadn’t had an orange
Cheetos mustache. That dog had apparently been snacking while he
had been finishing off the pizza.

“How long will it take to train him?”
Travers asked.

“Not long,” Zoe said. “Half an hour at
the most. Less time than it’ll take for the Fates to get
dressed.”

Travers sighed, bent, and absently
petted Bartholomew. For a man who claimed he didn’t like animals,
he was very affectionate with this one.

“I still don’t like the plan,” Travers
said. “The Fates aren’t going to know how to take care of him.
They’ll let him do all sorts of things that I wouldn’t let him
do.”

“So does Aunt Viv,” Kyle said, “and
you let me stay with her.”

Travers gave Kyle an exasperated
frown. Then Travers let his arms drop. “Tell you what,” he said to
Zoe. “You train Kyle how to—what is it? Project?”

She nodded.

“And I’ll call my sister, Megan. Maybe
she can get a few days off, until you have me as trained as we can
get me for that trip to Oregon.”

Zoe had to ask: “Will your sister be
able to handle the Fates?”

“Megan?” Travers looked at
Kyle, who smiled for the first time since he came into the hotel
room.

“My aunt Megan makes my dad look like
he’s flexible.” From the way Kyle said that, Zoe could tell Kyle
had used that example before.

“I am flexible,” Travers said with
only a little irritation.

“Not compared to Aunt Viv,” Kyle
said.

“Perhaps you should call that aunt,”
Zoe said.

“Can’t,” Kyle said. “She’s on her
honeymoon. She’d want to hear from me and Dad about as much as Dad
wants to have his day disrupted.”

Zoe looked at Travers. “Your sister
Megan doesn’t sound appropriate. Is there someone else you can
call?”

Travers shook his head. “I’ll call
Meg. When she gets here, we’ll make sure she and Kyle stay away
from the Fates. That’s all it’ll take.”

The man was truly an optimist, but Zoe
didn’t say that. He had only had a few days to get used to the ways
of magic and of the Fates. She had had an entire lifetime, and she
knew that getting rid of them wasn’t all that easy.

“The best thing to do,” she said, “is
find that wheel. Once the Fates have it, we can continue with our
lives.”

“Whatever that means,” Travers
said.

Zoe smiled. “Let’s hope you get a
chance to find out.”

Against his better
judgment, Travers left Kyle with the Fates. Travers also left
Bartholomew Fang there for good measure. While waiting for the
Fates, Travers had checked with the hotel about a baby-sitting
service, then decided that wouldn’t work, either.

Kyle was too old for conventional
baby-sitting, and the Fates probably would be in and out. They were
trouble enough when they were behaving. Travers couldn’t imagine
what the hotel would do when the Fates got out of hand.