Totally Spellbound (4 page)

“Of course he is, dear,” Atropos
said.

Megan bristled at the
“dear.” Atropos wasn’t much older than she was. She hated it when
people who were her age called her dear.

Of course, she hated it when people
weren’t her age called her dear.

“You may see my scrawny brother as
some kind of superhero, but he’s not—”

“No, dear, that’s Dex,” Clotho
said.

Dexter, Vivian’s new
husband. Megan admittedly didn’t know him very well, but she knew
for certain he wasn’t some kind of flying-through-the-air, rescuing
damsels in distress superhero.

“But
,” Megan said even louder, even
though she knew that loudness wasn’t the best way to take over a
conversation, “I grew up with Travers, and I know he doesn’t have
magical powers—except that he’s a math whiz—”

“Precisely!” Lachesis said.

“And
,” Megan said, determined not to
get sidetracked, “he doesn’t know how to fight or use a gun, so
he’d be useless in the rescue business. So—”

“A gun?” Atropos asked. “Who said
anything about a gun?”

“I believe she got caught up in
‘rescue’ and ‘detective,’” Clotho whispered. “After all, she has a
penchant for police language—”

“I do not!” Megan said. “I’m trying to
make a point here.”

“Which is?” Lachesis asked.

“That there’s no way Travers could be
off rescuing someone, so please, just tell me where he is, and then
I’ll shut up.”

The women looked at each
other with perfectly coordinated movements, as if they’d stepped
out of a Marx Brothers comedy.

“We don’t know where he is.” Atropos
bowed her head, and sounded very subdued.

Clotho said, “He went with Gaylord to
find Zoe. That’s all we know.”

“Gaylord?” Megan asked.

“He’s a Faerie thug,”
Lachesis said. “Um, that is, a thug, who’s rather nice,
but—”

“He’s gay?” Megan asked.

“Well, no.” Atropos looked confused.
“Not that I’ve seen. But he does laugh a lot.”

Megan resisted the urge to hit her
forehead with the heel of her hand, just like Kyle had done.
“Gaylord. He works for the mob?”

“No, he…” Clotho sighed and shook her
head. “I don’t know how to tell you this.”

“She doesn’t want to hear the truth,”
Lachesis said.

“Then how are we supposed to do our
job?” Atropos asked.

“What’s your job?” Megan asked,
feeling left out.

Clotho took a deep breath. “Look.
Here’s what we know.”

“Travers left with Gaylord to find
Zoe. We think she’s in trouble,” Lachesis said.

“But we don’t know for sure,” Atropos
said.

“And since you weren’t here yet,”
Clotho said.

“Your brother asked us to baby-sit
Kyle,” Lachesis said.

“But since you’re here now,” Atropos
said.

“We can go to bed.” Clotho headed
toward the door. The other two followed. Lachesis pulled the door
open, and as they stepped into the hallway, Atropos waggled her
fingers at Megan.

“We’re six doors down if you need us,”
Lachesis said.

“Ta-ta,” Atropos said.

And then they left, gently closing the
door behind them.

“Ta-ta?” Megan whispered. “Who says
that anymore?”

But this time, no
one answered her. Thank heavens. She rubbed her eyes and walked
into the living room.
The Two Towers
still played, albeit silently, on the large
screen.

She shut off the television and sank
down on the couch. It smelled faintly of lavender perfume. She was
exhausted. And confused. And not about to return to her nearby room
because Kyle wouldn’t know where she was.

So she needed a plan. It had to be a
simple one because she wasn’t up for complex.

She would sleep on the couch until
Kyle got up or Travers got home, whichever happened first. Then
she’d make breakfast for the three of them and get the real story.
Maybe by then these flights of fancy would be over, and she could
find out why everyone was making up such elaborate
stories.

A bed on the couch. How very polite
she was. She could just take Travers’ room. But she didn’t feel
right doing that. So she’d just take his blankets instead, and
maybe a pillow or two. He could sacrifice a pillow to her after all
this strangeness.

Strangeness—and a dog. Why hadn’t
anyone told her about the dog? Were they afraid she wouldn’t come
if she knew there was a dog? (Of course, she would have thought
twice about it, but Kyle in need always trumped a dog.)

Maybe when she woke up, she’d see the
absurdity in all of this. She knew it lurked—a dachshund named Fang
proved it—but her sense of humor was sleep-impaired.

She yawned. Morning was already here,
and she was wasting valuable sleep-time trying to figure out the
unfathomable. She always told her patients everything looked better
after sleep.

It was time to take her own
advice.

Rob arrived at the office
about six in the morning, ready to work. Exercise and a few hours’
sleep always rejuvenated him, but they reminded him how different
his life was these days. It had been a lot easier to take care of
the poor and oppressed in a small village—even before he realized
he had magical powers—than it was to care for them now.

Of course, over the past several
centuries, his perspective had changed. He no longer believed that
the imposter King of England, John, and his henchman, the Sheriff
of Nottingham, had created poverty all by themselves.

In fact, over the years, Rob had come
to realize that the Bible was right; the poor would always be with
us.

That didn’t mean a man had to stop
trying to help them.

He still robbed from the rich to give
to the poor, but now he did it legally, through charitable
corporate entities that he’d set up over the space of decades. And
now the rich pretended to enjoy the privilege, believing they would
get a return on their dollar.

They rarely did.

He pushed papers aside on the Lucite
desk that some designer had thought would be a pleasure to work on,
and pulled his plush chair away from the window.

Outside, the Vegas strip winked at him
— its bizarre architecture ruining the view of the mountains that
he’d had when this office was built sixty-five years ago. The
desert had its own stark beauty: the browns of the sand, the greens
of the cacti, and the subtle whites and grays of the mountains in
the distance.

He used to love the clear
air, the way that the land met the horizon so softly that they
seemed to blend into each other. But over time, the air had become
the most polluted in the nation, the buildings had destroyed the
view of the horizon, and the city had sprawled so far across his
lovely desert that he couldn’t find a comfortable place to fly his
falcon any more.

Rob sighed and adjusted the window
tint to dark before he sat down. Now he tried to avoid the Vegas
office as much as possible. He worked out of New York and London
whenever he could. The cities were what they had always been:
centers of commerce, places where humans congregated, places where
he would never consider setting his falcon free for a
hunt.

The office itself looked
stark and foreboding in the shaded morning light. The plants, all
some form of desert succulent, seemed faded, the furniture that
horrible see-through stuff that he’d been meaning to replace for
some time.

Even the rug’s geometric
design—a black triangle bisecting a gray square—irritated him. He
just couldn’t justify a remodel on an office that he used only
three times a year.

And unfortunately, this
was one of those times. Vegas cooled to 102 degrees at night—if 102
degrees could be called “cool” (and he supposed it could,
considering the temperatures were 115 during the day)—and was the
warmest place on the planet this side of hell.

Even though he hadn’t
lived in England full-time since the nineteenth century, he still
considered himself an Englishman at heart, and Englishmen preferred
their cool nights to have a bit of ground fog, a touch of rain, and
temperatures below 55. Anything else was a complete and utter
abomination.

He sighed again. Perhaps
the exercise and sleep hadn’t improved his mood. It was still as
foul as it had been yesterday evening when John had kicked him out
of the office and told him to take care of himself.

As if on cue, the door
opened, and John Little poked his head in. The man was hideously
misnamed. He was six-seven and two-seventy-five when he was trim,
and he wasn’t always trim. He’d gone on the Atkins Diet a few years
ago, saying it reminded him of the Good Old Days, and had lost
about fifty pounds, making him seem less like a treehouse and more
like a tree.

The name John
worked—although over the centuries he had sometimes called himself
the Irish version, Sean, and occasionally (always under duress) the
French Jean. He’d use different variations on Little, too—sometimes
opting for Petit and sometimes for Pequeño.

He’d had fun with his name
in ways that Rob couldn’t. Even though John Little had lived on
through the mythology as Little John, the name wasn’t nearly as
recognizable as Robin Hood.

“You don’t look happy,” John said as
he stepped inside. He crouched as he did so. While the other doors
in the building had been redone to accommodate John, this one
hadn’t.

Rob liked to keep his office tailored
to his own size—which wasn’t exactly small, except in comparison to
his best friend.

“Happiness is overrated,” Rob
said.

John shook his head. “You never used
to say that.”

“Overrated is a relatively new term.”
Rob tapped the computer on the far side of his desk out of sleep
mode. The day’s stock reports were already updating
themselves.

“Relatively is a relatively new term,”
John said, “but you know what I mean.”

Rob glanced at the Dow, watching the
lines move, knowing that the money lost with each downturn could
feed a thousand families for a year. Sometimes he lost faith, that
was all. Sometimes he felt like everything he did—everything he had
always done—was completely futile.

“You’re ignoring me,” John said. “The
midnight falconry didn’t work, huh?”

“It was the woman.” The words left
Rob’s mouth before he even thought about them. He raised his
head.

John’s bushy eyebrows hit the edge of
his curly brown hair. “Woman?”

Rob grabbed the mouse and
clicked open his NASDAQ window. The lines were moving on that
thing, too. Making and breaking fortunes all over the
world.

Pretend money.

He missed gold pieces.

“What woman?”

Rob shook his head. “A pretty thing.
She drove her car right into my bubble.”

“That’s not possible.”

“That’s what I thought, but it
happened.”

“And it made you unhappy?”

“Threw me off my rhythm.” He had
thought about her for the rest of the night, not about falconry and
magic and the lovely—albeit desolate—scenery.

“A woman did that?” John’s gray eyes
glinted.

“We hardly spoke to each other. I was
just a bit startled that she had appeared, that’s all.” Rob tried
to focus on those lines for what they meant to him—a double-check
to see if he had talked with the right CEOs about the right
investments, so that they would make the right amount of money, so
that they could funnel an even righter amount of money into his
nonprofits.

“She was magic, then,” John
said.

“No.”

“She’s going to be magic, then,” John
said.

“I have no idea.”

“She’s attractive, then,” John
said.

“Well, of course,” Rob
muttered.

“Aha!”

The “aha” startled him,
and made him realize he’d answered the questions out loud. He
really was off his game this morning.

“You haven’t found a woman attractive
since Marian died,” John said.

Rob crossed his arms. “Have
to.”

“Have not.”

“That’s eight hundred years ago. A man
would have to be dead not to find another woman
attractive.”

“If the shoe fits,” John
said.

“I wasn’t dead,” Rob said. Even though
he had wanted to be.

For a very, very long time, he had
wanted to be.

In fact, sometimes, when he saw an
elderly couple holding hands, enjoying their last few years
together, he felt cheated. He wanted a normal life with his lady
love. He wanted a belief that even though the life ended, the love
endured—and not just in story and song.