Absolutely Captivated (36 page)

“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.

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 collected 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.