Absolutely Captivated (14 page)

She looked frazzled and angry—Travers
wasn’t sure how he knew she was angry, but he sensed it—and then
she blinked. Her expression changed, as if she had done so on
purpose, and then she surveyed the room.

Including the mountain of money that
hid her legs all the way to the middle of her thighs.

“Is this my fee?” she asked. “If so,
the answer’s yes.”

Travers flushed. Kyle rolled out of
the money pile and sat on the floor, his arms wrapped around his
legs. He was staring at the dog with a look of longing that Travers
immediately wanted to squelch.

The Fates glanced at each other as if
considering Zoe’s question.

“No,” Travers said. “This is all fake
money.”

“It doesn’t look fake.”
Zoe shifted the dog slightly so that she could pick up one of the
five-dollar bills. She held it up to her face, then crumpled it.
“Feels right. Looks right. Smells right, if Bartholomew here hasn’t
ruined my sense of smell. It’s real money. Where did it come
from?”

She looked at Kyle first, as if he
could do this. Kyle gave his dad a frightened glance. Perhaps he
was wondering if he could.

Then she looked at the Fates. “I
thought your powers were lost.”

“We gave them up,” Clotho
said.

“Voluntarily,” Lachesis
added.

“Even though it was a mistake,”
Atropos said.

“Which, of course,” Clotho
said.

“We realized in hindsight.” Lachesis
finished.

Zoe sighed, and finally turned to him.
Her gaze met his. Her eyes caught him again—that brown mixed with
the gold flecks. At the outside corner of her eyes, her lashes
curled, giving her a naturally festive look.

His flush deepened. “I don’t get it,”
he said, even though he did. He felt a whoosh, like a breath
leaving him, each time he imagined more money. He wondered what it
would be like to imagine a billion fives—if that whoosh would be
even worse—and then he felt it, just the same as before.

For a half second, he closed his eyes,
not wanting to see.

“That’s impressive,” Zoe said. “But I
was happy with the first pile.”

Travers opened his eyes.
The room was filled with cash. Everywhere. Even the Fates were
covered with money, as if someone had thrown a ticker-tape parade
with five-dollar bills.

“Dad?” Kyle whispered.

“Okay,” Travers said, happy that his
voice was level. “I’m freaking out. Can we stop this?”

“You’re the only one doing anything,”
Atropos said.

“Our magic is long gone,” Clotho
said.

“And young Kyle here hasn’t come into
his,” Lachesis said.

“Except for his psychic abilities.”
Zoe’s timing put her in the middle of the Fates’ usual
one-two-three routine. Atropos looked at her in
amazement.

Zoe shrugged. “What were you doing,
pretending to be a giant slot payout?”

Travers shook his head. He felt
slightly dizzy. The room had the smell of cash, that sharpish Magic
Marker scent, mixed with the odor of old paper, and a faint hint of
sweat.

“How do I make it go away?” he
asked.

“Zoe would like it as a fee,” Atropos
said.

Travers shook his head. He had no idea
where the money came from.

“If I wanted magically generated cash,
I could do it myself. Besides, I haven’t agreed to take your case
yet.” Zoe pushed some of the money aside, like a swimmer trying to
brush aside water in a pool. “Can you move your newfound wealth to
your SUV or maybe your hotel room? I need to set the dog down and
get to my desk.”

Travers started, and the very first
thing that came to mind came out of his mouth. “How did you know I
have an SUV?”

“Oh, please,” Zoe said. “Look at
yourself. I didn’t even have to peek through the window to
double-check the assumption.”

Travers opened his hands in
confusion.

“You have some kind of
professional job, corporate maybe, or working near corporations.
Very stuffy. Very Keeping-Up-with-the-Joneses—whom I’ve met, by the
way, the original ones? And they’re really not worth keeping up
with at all. When was the last time you had fun?”

Travers frowned. His sister’s wedding
had been fun. Kinda. He hadn’t danced, even though Kyle urged him
to, and he hadn’t had more to drink than soda, but he had a good
time.

“I bet you were always like this. Very
buttoned up. Even when you were in your jock phase. What were you,
anyway? Baseball? Basketball—maybe second string
college?”

“No,” Travers said,
beginning to feel angry. Who was she to judge him? “I never went to
college.”

Zoe raised her eyebrows. Kyle opened
his mouth, then closed it again.

“I went to night school for a few
years before I got enough credits to get into a real school. And
that took a lot of juggling for a single father.” His words had
bite to them, but he wasn’t going to say what he was
thinking.

He hadn’t had fun—not the kind she was
talking about—because he’d had responsibilities from a young age.
She looked like a woman who had never had
responsibilities.

At that moment, the dog whined. Zoe
absently petted him, her long fingers toying with his ears. Travers
had never envied a dog before.

“Sorry,” she said, but the word was
brusque and didn’t sound sorry at all. “Now, will you get back to
my original question and clear out the office?”

Travers looked at the Fates with great
concern. “Do I just say—?”

“Wait!” Clotho said, holding up her
hand.

“Don’t think!” Lachesis said, holding
up her hand as well.

“You have to be very careful with this
one,” Atropos said, amazingly not imitating the posture of the
other two women. “It’s a delicate spell.”

“What is?” Zoe asked.

“He’s a baby wizard,” Clotho
said.

“He’s at least thirty,” Zoe said.
“He’s been doing it for a while, protestations to the
contrary.”

“No,” Travers said, trying hard to
understand what “don’t think” meant and how anyone could pull that
off. “I haven’t been doing anything.”

“Except winning the lottery,” Kyle
muttered. “and having the best record with the IRS of any CPA in
California history. You know what people say about my
dad?”

“Kyle!” Travers breathed.

Zoe got that curious
half-smile that made her seem even more attractive. “What do they
say about your dad?”

“That if you want to do well with
money, he’s the go-to guy.” Kyle spoke with obvious
pride.

Travers felt his cheeks heat even
more. He had always hated that recommendation. It made him sound
sleazy, even though he wasn’t. Could he be blamed for having a
talent for picking successful clients? Not that they were all
successful when they came to him, but within a year, he got their
numbers to improve—if, of course, the client listened to him. What
was wrong with that?

“Really?” Zoe asked and looked at the
Fates, as if they knew something he didn’t.

(Well, of course they knew something
he didn’t. They seemed to know a lot that he didn’t, but those
things weren’t really things he wanted to know. At least, he
thought he didn’t want to know them.)

Then Travers shook his head, trying to
keep the parenthetical thoughts to a minimum. He needed to pay
attention, not get sidetracked by the nitpickiness of his own
mind.

“This man has a limited magic, dealing
only with numbers?” Zoe was asking. “Is that possible?”

“Of course it’s possible,” Lachesis
said. “You’re seeing it in front of you.”

“And, to be honest,” Atropos added,
“he’s lucky his magic is limited.”

Clotho nodded, her fingers on the
bridge of her nose as if she were getting a headache. “We had one
case, just a few years ago—”

“Or maybe a few decades,” Lachesis
said.

“We really do have trouble with time,”
Atropos said, as if no one else had noticed.

“Anyway,” Clotho said, “there was a
young woman—”

“Well, she
wasn’t
that
young,” Lachesis said.

“She was a thousand if she was a day,”
Atropos said.

“A thousand!” Kyle said, only because
he managed to get the words out before Travers. Travers felt the
same shock that he heard in his son’s tones. “Magic people live to
be a thousand?”

“Several thousand,” Clotho
said.

Travers felt as if
he had been hit in the stomach. He had magic and he would live to
be several thousand years old? He let out a small breath. If this
was
Candid Camera
, he wanted Alan Funt or Alan Funt, Jr., or whoever was in
charge of the tricks these days to appear mighty soon, because
Travers wasn’t sure he could take much more.

“Is this rambling tale really
necessary?” Zoe asked, joggling the dog just a little. “I really
want to sit down.”

“Anyway
,” Lachesis said, putting
emphasis on the word, probably to discourage more interruptions,
“this girl—”

“Woman,” Atropos corrected. “Remember
your political correctness lessons.”

“Oh, geez,” Zoe said and rolled her
eyes.

“This
woman
,” Clotho said, as
if she had been the one to make the mistake, “her name was Emma
Lost, and she had powerful magic.”

“Frighteningly powerful magic,”
Lachesis said.

“And no training at all,” Atropos
said, “because everyone believed she was only thirty when she’d
been—”

“Get to the point,” Zoe
said, only because she, too, was quicker than Travers.

“Well,” Clotho said,
managing to sound offended, “Emma’s magic was so powerful and out
of control that she was turning cats into lions—”

“In nice suburban neighborhoods where
apparently the changes didn’t go over well,” Lachesis
added.

“—
raining furniture on
unsuspecting secretaries,” Atropos said.

“Nearly killing one,” Clotho
added.

“—
and exasperating college
professors,” Lachesis said.

“Which, by far, caused the most
trouble,” Atropos said.

“And this is
relevant how?” Travers asked. Some fives fell from the ceiling, but
he couldn’t tell if they remained from his last
whoosh
or if they were from some new
random thought he hadn’t acknowledged.

“Her magic was out of control,” Clotho
said.

“And it was very, very powerful,”
Lachesis said.

“Making her quite dangerous,” Atropos
said.

“Fortunately,” Clotho
said, “you don’t have to worry about that.”

“What?” Travers asked, wishing these
women didn’t confuse him so. “I don’t have to worry about what? The
dangerous part or the out-of-control magic part?”

“The dangerous part, Dad,” Kyle said.
He, apparently, was having no trouble following the Fates’ twisted
syntax. “You don’t have enough power. They were saying you were
lucky that you didn’t.”

“Oh,” Travers said, and sank into a
nearby chair. Money crunched beneath his weight. “Nice to know
there’s no worries.”

“We didn’t say there were no worries,”
Lachesis said.

“After all, now that you’ve discovered
the talent, it will manifest even more,” Atropos said.

Travers frowned. “So what do I
do?”

“You get trained immediately, of
course,” Clotho said.

“After you get rid of this money in my
office.” Zoe pushed at it again. “Or I will.”

“Perhaps you should, dear,” Lachesis
said. “I’m afraid if he does it, all the money in the vicinity will
vanish.”

“Good point.” Zoe leaned over the pile
of money and shoved the dog into Travers arms.

The dog reeked. It had
some white, flaky garbage on its back, and part of a banana peel
between its toes. A Snickers wrapper stuck to the pad of one foot,
and its tail was slightly wet—giving off that pee odor Travers had
noticed first.

“Thanks,” he muttered. The dog licked
his face, adding the spicy scent of Italian sausage to the other
odors.

But Zoe didn’t notice. She
snapped her fingers, and the money piles all disappeared, down to
the last five-dollar bill.

Travers stood up and
looked at the chair. No money on the seat cushion. No money on his
backside, either, so far as he could tell.

“Wow,” Kyle breathed. “How did you do
that?”

“You’ll learn it eventually,” Zoe
said. “Explaining it now will simply confuse you.”

“How about explaining it to me?”
Travers asked.

Zoe gave him a sideways look. She
studied him for a moment, making his cheeks grow even warmer. He
hated blushing like a child. He felt naked before her, and not in a
good way. At least, not in the way he would have liked.