Absolutely Captivated (15 page)

Then he felt his neck and chest flush
as well. The heat was overwhelming.

“You can’t read my thoughts, can you?”
he asked, hoping that none of them could. What if the Fates could?
Did they know how he had felt about them on the entire trip? How
embarrassing.

Zoe grinned. “Why? Was that blush for
me?”

The blush went even deeper. His entire
body felt like one giant heat rash.

“No,” he lied.

“They can’t read you,
Dad.” Kyle was still sitting on the floor, only now, instead of
sifting through money, he was leaning against the desk. “Only I can
do that, and it’s because you’re broadcasting. And really, I don’t
need to have thoughts like that in my head. Sandra Bullock was bad
enough, but—”

“Kyle,” Travers cautioned.

Zoe laughed. “I know how
men think, Mr. Kinneally. That was an education I got a long, long
time ago.”

“I wasn’t, really,” he lied. “I was
just—”

“Worrying about your magic, right?”
Zoe walked behind her desk without grabbing the dog. The poor thing
just lay in Travers arms as if it were the most tired dog in the
universe.

“Right,” Travers lied. Or maybe that
wasn’t a lie. He was worried about this so-called magic of
his—

“Stop it, Dad,” Kyle said. “It’s not
‘so-called.’ It exists. Or do we have to do more experiments to
prove it to you?”

“No,” Travers said a bit too quickly.
“No more experiments.”

“Good,” Zoe said, “because I now have
several problems to deal with.”

She leaned her chair back and put her
high heels on her desk.

“Like the dog?” Travers asked. “He
needs a bath.”

“No kidding,” Zoe said.

The dog whined softly.

“Maybe a magical bath?” Travers
asked.

The Fates frowned.

“Technically,” Zoe said, “and you’ll
learn this as you learn the rules, we’re not supposed to use magic
for simple tasks unless the situation demands it.”

“My nose demands it,” Travers
said.

The dog whined again.

“You kinda get used to it.” Zoe put
her hands behind her head. “As I was saying, I have several
problems now. I have the dog, whose name is Bartholomew, by the
way, even though he wants it changed.”

The dog yipped and his tail thumped.
Travers made the mistake of looking at the dog’s face, and he saw
eagerness and agreement, and way too much intelligence for a lesser
mammal.

Travers made himself look
away.

“Then,” Zoe said, “I have
the rather horrible discovery that children are running the legal
and judicial branch of our government—”

“Oh, you met them,” Atropos
said.

“I met them,” Zoe said, “and they are
absolutely terrifying. How could you leave them alone like that?
They have no idea what they’re doing.”

“It’s not our fault,” Clotho said. “We
were forced out. Term limits, remember?”

The dog squirmed again. Travers
wondered if the pee smell was growing stronger. “You need to get
down, little guy?”

To Travers’ great consternation, the
dog nodded.

Travers set him down a bit too
quickly.

“Oh, yes, term limits,” Zoe said. “You
started the conversation that way several days ago.”

“Was it days?” Atropos asked. “I would
have thought it’s only been hours—”

“But that does explain why we’re so
hungry,” Clotho said.

“She’s exaggerating,” Travers
snapped.

“About what?” Lachesis
asked.

“About the time,” Kyle said. “It only
feels like days.”

Zoe grinned at him. Travers’ breath
still left his body when she grinned, even when she grinned at
someone else.

“Thank you,” Zoe said. “And now, after
seeing them, and realizing that this conflict in government could
become permanent, I have the unfortunate feeling I need to ask you
ladies something.”

“What?” The Fates asked in
unison.

“Before you do,” Travers
said, “do you mind if Kyle and I leave? After all, we’ve done our
part—”

“No, you have not,” Atropos said. “You
have to stay.”

“Your part is just beginning,” Clotho
said.

Travers’ heart was
pounding.

“Besides,” Atropos said, “you need a
new mentor.”

“Your old one obviously wasn’t up to
snuff,” Clotho said.

“So we’re assigning you one,” Lachesis
said.

Travers held his breath. He couldn’t
help it. Bartholomew waddled away from him, heading toward the
bathroom. Kyle followed, as if the conflict in front of him didn’t
interest him.

But Travers felt like everything was
about to change.

“The only person who can teach you now
is Zoe,” Atropos said.

“Because, after all,” Clotho said,
throwing an impish look at Zoe, “you are the closest
mage.”

Travers looked at Zoe, who stared at
him. Her mouth was slightly open, in a seductive, kissable way. How
could he learn anything from her? He would never be able to
concentrate. He wouldn’t be able to think of anything at all when
he saw how her dark hair curled ever so slightly against her high
cheekbones, how her shapely legs rested so comfortably on the
desktop, how long those shapely legs were, and—

“No,” Zoe said.

“No?” Travers asked. He hadn’t even
propositioned her yet. Not that he would with his son in the room.
His son and three strange women. His son, three strange women, and
the smelliest dog he had ever encountered.

“No,” Zoe said, but it soon became
clear she wasn’t talking to him. “Las Vegas is lousy with mages.
Get one of them.”

“Do I get a vote?” Travers
asked.

“No,” all four women said to him in
unison.

That annoyed him, and made him stop
thinking of Zoe as a beautiful woman for a moment. His
concentration returned and as he turned to the Fates—who really
were becoming a single unit in his mind, which was also unnerving
him—he asked, “I thought you guys weren’t in charge
anymore.”

“We will be,” Lachesis
said.

“If Zoe helps us,” Atropos
said.

“It’s only a matter of time,” Clotho
said.

“But for now,” Travers said, “you have
no power at all.”

“Oh,” Zoe said. “I see where you’re
going with this.”

He nodded at her and she sat up,
swinging those luscious legs off the desk.

“You can’t make me his mentor,” Zoe
said, “because you have no authority for that.”

“But he needs one,” Lachesis
said.

“And do you really want those children
to assign him one?” Atropos asked.

Zoe gritted her teeth. “You’re going
to guilt me into this, aren’t you?”

“Well, no,” Clotho said. “You don’t
have to do it if you don’t want to.”

“But,” Lachesis said, and she was not
smiling, “if we do get our power back, we will remember this
and—”

“I don’t want her,” Travers said. He
was astonished at himself. He was doing his share of lying this
day. Maybe enough to last him an entire decade.

He did want her. He just didn’t want
her as a teacher. Well, not a teacher of magic. She could teach him
other things.

Which she’d probably slap him for even
thinking about in her presence.

Good thing she couldn’t hear those
thoughts.

“I can, Dad!” Kyle yelled from the
bathroom. “Will you knock it off?”

Travers felt his cheeks heat again. He
hadn’t even realized the earlier heat had faded until the new heat
appeared. He had to get out of this office before he went
completely insane.

“It doesn’t matter what you want,”
Atropos said.

“You need to be trained,” Clotho
said.

“Zoe needs an assistant,” Lachesis
said.

“I do not,” Zoe said, sounding very
indignant. “I have worked alone my entire life.”

“Of course you have, dear,” Atropos
said. “But our case is brand new.”

“All cases are new at one point or
another,” Zoe said.

“No,” Clotho said. “New for
you.”

Zoe seemed confused. Travers certainly
was. All he wanted was to go home and pretend this last week hadn’t
happened.

But Kyle wouldn’t allow
that.

And besides, pretending this last week
hadn’t happened would mean Travers would have to forget about Zoe,
which was something he wasn’t willing to do.

At least on the fantasy
level.

“Da-ad!”

“Sorry!” Travers yelled.

The women ignored the interchange,
just like they were ignoring the sound of water running. Travers
wasn’t ignoring it. He just felt he was better served staying in
the main office than finding out what his son was doing in the
back.

“I’m going to regret asking this,” Zoe
said, “but in what way will the case be new for me?”

“Well, my dear,” Lachesis said,
“unless your life has changed dramatically while we’ve been in
exile, you’ve never ventured into the places this case will take
you.”

“Yeah, right,” Zoe said, and somehow
Travers believed her. He had a hunch she had seen more mean streets
than he ever knew existed. Dark corners, dark alleyways. Zoe
Sinclair gave off the sense of knowing more about the shady side of
humanity—and inhumanity? What were these people called?

“Mages, Dad,” Kyle yelled.

“What?” Atropos asked.

Travers shook his head. “Seems I’m
broadcasting again.”

“Yeah!” Kyle yelled. “Quit
it.”

“Would if I could,” Travers said. But
he had no idea how. Just like he had no idea how the
money—

Whoosh!

—fell from the sky.

Like it was doing now. It
was literally raining five-dollar bills in the tiny
office.

“Cut it out,” Zoe said.

“Now is not the time, Travers,” Clotho
said.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he
said.

“No kidding,” Zoe said.

“Say ‘Reverse!’” Lachesis
said.

“Reverse!” Travers said as Zoe said,
“No, I don’t think that’ll…”

But she let her voice trail off. For a
moment, the money stopped raining. Then it slowly rose back to the
ceiling, one bill at a time. The problem was the bills just floated
up there, not raining, not disappearing either.

“Wow,” Atropos said. “Paper currency
is very real to you, isn’t it?”

“Economics is the foundation to
everything,” Travers said. “If you look at all human motivation,
you’ll find economics behind each and every action.”

“Bull-pucky,” all three Fates said in
unison.

“He has a point,” Zoe said.

The Fates looked at her.

“When did you become so cynical?”
Clotho asked.

“I’m not cynical,” Zoe said, “and this
isn’t about me. It’s about him.”

She pointed at Travers. He felt like a
ten-year-old who had been bad.

“How do I make it disappear?” he
asked.

“I’ll do it,” she said. “Just let me
finish this conversation, okay?”

“Okay.” He rested his hands on his
knees and tried not to think. He also tried not to look at the
five-dollar bills, moving back and forth across the ceiling, like
clouds building on a stormy day.

“All right,” Zoe said, giving him a
harsh look. Even that was attractive.

Travers tried to block those thoughts
as well. He almost gave himself permission to think of pink
elephants, but the problem with those would be—

Whoosh!

—a single pink elephant,
the size of a small horse, appeared in the middle of the room. The
elephant was stuffed, with a trunk that curled upward like an
upside-down question mark, and it was Barbie pink.

It looked vaguely like an elephant
he’d won for Kyle at the fair when Kyle was five.

“Stop it!” Zoe said again.

“Sorry,” Travers said.

“You promised,” Zoe said.

“Sorry,” Travers repeated.

“So just stop thinking,” Zoe
said.

“I did,” Travers said.

“No,” Zoe said. “You were quite
obviously thinking of something else. Try white noise. Try a hum.
Try concentrating on this conversation for a change.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Travers said
as meekly as he could. He’d never created anything out of thin air
before, and here he was, creating pink elephants and money and
broadcasting his thoughts. The next thing you knew—

“Dad! Stop that!” Kyle yelled from the
back.

Travers took a deep breath. “If you
want me to concentrate on this conversation,” he said, “you have to
converse.”