Absolutely Captivated (17 page)

“Fang?” Travers somehow managed to
speak with a straight face. “He wants to be called
Fang?”

“Well, he would have insisted on
Bruiser, but people might have thought that was a joke.” Kyle spoke
with complete seriousness. “So he’s settling for Fang.”

“You want me to own a dachshund named
Fang.” Travers still had a straight face, but his tone had become a
little deeper, as if he were trying to hold in his
emotions.

“You can’t really own him, Dad,” Kyle
said. “He’s a familiar. But he’d be a good one, provided you don’t
rip people off.”

“Rip people off doing what?” Travers
asked.

“Accounting, I guess,” Kyle said. “His
previous owner—familiar guy—whatever—”

“Mage,” Atropos whispered.

“Yeah, him,” Kyle said. “I guess he
ripped people off, and Bartho—I mean, Fang—doesn’t want to do it
anymore.”

“Good for him,” Travers said. “But I
don’t need a familiar.”

“Yes, you do!” Kyle spoke in unison
with the Fates this time. Both Travers and Zoe jumped. Then they
looked at each other, and Zoe could tell that Travers liked Kyle
speaking with the Fates even less than she did.

“I don’t want a pet,” Travers
said.

“He wouldn’t be a pet, Dad,” Kyle
said. “I keep telling you that. He’s a familiar.”

“Tell you what.” Zoe was
ready to have this day over with. “You take the Fates; I’ll take
the dog. I’m in between familiars, too.”

The dachshund’s tail sagged and his
round little body wilted. Even his head went down.

You didn’t have to be
psychic to know that Bartholomew, a.k.a. Fang, didn’t want to go
home with Zoe.

“No deal,” Travers said.

“Besides,” Clotho said, “he needs a
familiar.”

“As well as a mentor,” Lachesis said
rather pointedly.

“His magic, now that he has
acknowledged it, will really go awry,” Atropos said.

Zoe looked from them to the boy and
back to Travers. “I’m supposed to feel guilty about this?” she
asked, not because they wanted her to, but because she already
did.

Feel guilty, that is. She felt like
she wasn’t doing her part, whatever her part was supposed to
be.

“No,” the Fates said.

“Yes,” Kyle said.

The dog added a little yip.

“You must help us,” Clotho said.
“You’re the only person we can turn to.”

That turned Zoe’s guilt into anger.
She hated being bullied. “As I said, there are a great number of
mages in Las Vegas alone. I’m sure you’ll find someone to help
you.”

“But Zanthia,” Lachesis said,
deliberately taking power by using Zoe’s very real, very
impractical name, “you are the only detective among our people. You
are the only person who can find our wheel without resorting to
excessive magic.”

“Wheel?” Zoe asked before she could
stop herself.

“Yes,” Atropos said. “That’s why we’re
here.”

“We really don’t
need a baby-sitter,” Clotho said, but behind her, Kyle
mouthed
Yes, they do.

Travers rolled his eyes.
Bartholomew—Fang—the dang dachshund—kicked his squat little legs,
and forced Kyle to set him down. The dog ran to Travers, sat in
front of him, and rose on his hind legs into a begging
position.

It was the only cute thing Zoe had
ever seen the dachshund do.

“I don’t have food,” Travers said,
rather plaintively.

“He can’t be hungry,” Zoe said. “He
ate more meat than Tony Roma’s serves in a month.”

The dog looked up at Travers with
soulful eyes. His long ears trailed down his back and his snout was
pointed directly at Travers’ face. The dog now looked like a pillar
with a dachshund head.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,”
Travers said, and crouched. The dog got down, and his tail wagged.
He licked Travers’ hands and then put his paws on Travers’ knees,
and went for his face. Travers shook his head.

“Can we keep him, Dad?” Kyle asked
again.

“I’m not taking care of the Fates,”
Zoe said.

“We can’t split up now,” Lachesis
said.

“I was thinking that the three of you
go on your merry way,” Zoe said to the Fates, “I’ll stay here, and
Kyle, his dad, and the dog can go on their way.”

“How do you convince people without
magic?” Atropos asked the other Fates.

“Everyone here has magic,”
Clotho said. “Or will.”

“No, goofy,” Lachesis said. “She means
how do you convince without magic?”

“Like she knows,” Atropos said. She
sank into her chair.

Zoe felt the guilt return. She sighed.
“You do it,” she said, “by presenting a coherent
argument.”

Travers picked up the dog, then wiped
his face with the back of his hand. “You’re not helping yourself
here,” he said to her.

She grinned at him. “Neither are
you.”

For a moment, they were the only two
people in the room. No boy, no dog, no Fates. Just her and Travers,
grinning at each other like teenagers.

And they shouldn’t grin. Not with what
they were both thinking.

They were both thinking of giving
in.

Zoe sighed, and so did Travers. They
sighed in unison, as if they were as closely connected as the
Fates.

A little shiver ran
through Zoe. But it wasn’t an unpleasant sensation. If she wanted
to connect with anyone, it was Travers Kinneally.

There was a certain inevitability to
the day. Zoe wouldn’t get her bath and her romance novel, but she
might get something else—a memorable few days, if nothing
else.

But there was no way Zoe would go into
Faerie. Not for the Fates, not for the sexiest man she’d ever
met.

Not for anything.

Parenting had taught Travers many
skills he never thought he would gain. Patience was one. Enjoyment
of someone else’s company was another.

And the third, which in some ways was
the most important, was knowing when and where to pick your
battles.

Travers had picked this
small, badly air-conditioned office for his battle, and he had lost
long before the first five-dollar bill had fallen from the ceiling.
He had probably lost when his sister Vivian had batted her dark
brown eyes at him and asked him to take her friends to Los Angeles.
He had certainly lost when his son had fallen in love with an
overweight dachshund who thought he was a rottweiler.

So Travers gave in. The worst he would
get was a dachshund. It looked like Zoe might get custody of the
Fates.

Which was not a—fate—he would wish on
anyone.

At his suggestion, they left the
office and went to the Strip. He and Kyle—and the Fates,
apparently—needed a hotel room, and Zoe knew some people who knew
some people who might give him a package for the week to take the
sting out of the price.

They finally picked a no-name hotel
just off the Strip, one that only had video poker machines and a
few slots, nothing that was really considered gambling, at least
not in a town like Las Vegas.

Zoe had come with them, squeezing into
Travers’ SUV rather than taking her own car. She said that going to
the Strip made the trip easy for her, because if she wanted to
leave, she could just take a cab.

But from what he was learning, if she
wanted to leave, she could just snap her fingers, wiggle her nose,
or mutter some magic charm and vanish.

He could probably do that,
too, which gave him the shivers.

Just like that pink elephant had. The
pink elephant that Zoe made disappear before she unspelled the
front door of her office, before she conjured up a leash for
Bartholomew Fang.

Bartholomew Fang. That name rather
suited the dog. Travers couldn’t think of the poor creature as
Bartholomew, and he certainly wasn’t your average Fang.

Or even your below-average Fang. The
poor dog would simply have to understand that being called Fang all
by itself was as much of a joke as being called Bruiser.

Zoe gave Bartholomew Fang and his
leash to Kyle, which surprised Travers, since he thought the dog
was supposed to be his. But Travers really didn’t mind, and Kyle
liked the animal. Kyle seemed focused on him, while Travers was
focused on the next few hours.

He had surprised himself by deciding
to stay.

Travers had stepped out of the humid,
smelly, moldy climes of that small office into the Vegas heat and
had wilted, glad he had decided to end the standoff, and not as
sorry that he had lost as he had expected to be.

Part of that was Zoe. For the first
time since his marriage, Travers let the idea of being around a
woman dictate his actions.

And he tried to keep that thought to
himself. He didn’t want Kyle to know.

He certainly didn’t
want to think about it. Nor did he want to think about the lighter
feeling he’d had since the magic stopped
whooshin
g out of him. Not because
he’d used it—no. He’d been using it for years just like everyone
said, only he’d been coming up with other
explanations.

Rationales that seemed to work for his
logical brain, sort of. Part of his mind, the subconscious, maybe
the truly logical part, had known that even with each rationale,
the statistical anomaly of his luck with numbers was so extreme
that something else had to be causing it.

And if Travers admitted
that his son had psychic powers, then he would be admitting that
magic—or things beyond his ken—actually existed. Then he would have
to admit that his skill with numbers, his older sister’s psychic
hotline, his Great-Aunt Eugenia’s ability to appear at just the
right moments, all of those things had an explanation other than
the surface one.

Of course, it had taken
three women out of Greek mythology, an overweight dog, and the most
beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life to convince him. Oh,
yeah, and a storm of money as well as one stuffed, obscenely pink
elephant.

Because of the stress, because of the
changes, Travers had decided to get his own room. He had rented two
suites in the no-name hotel—one suite for him and Kyle, and the
other for the Fates—and Zoe had done the negotiating with the
people who owned the place.

While she had done that, Travers had
tried not to hyperventilate. As well off as he was, he never spent
a lot of money. He wasn’t going to change that habit—he had learned
as a CPA that frugality kept the rich rich—but he would be
comfortable, at least for the next few days while four women
reorganized his life.

For a no-name hotel, the suite was
pretty impressive. Two large rooms in the center had a kitchen and
a living room big enough to seat the Fates, the pink elephant, and
all of their friends. Travers’ own bedroom had another sitting area
walled off from the bed with stained glass. He could hibernate if
he wanted to, and not even see Kyle.

Kyle’s room was a little smaller, but
not much. He also had his own television, which Travers had
restricted when he checked in so that Kyle couldn’t get
Pay-Per-View movies, HBO, or any other channel that wasn’t
child-friendly.

Travers might be reorganizing his
life, but he wasn’t going to overlook his kid. Not even in the
small details.

The hotel didn’t mind the
dog, either. In fact, the woman at the desk had food and water
dishes, as well as a doggie bed, delivered to the room.

The suite he had gotten for the Fates
was like his, only with three bedrooms. He had inspected it
briefly, but the women declared it fine, so he didn’t worry about
it much.

Zoe had remained downstairs, finishing
the negotiations, and he hoped she would stay. She had looked
shell-shocked on the drive. Shell-shocked, exhausted, and slightly
defeated. Something more than the Fates disturbed her, and Travers
wanted to know what it was.

He wanted to know everything he could
about her, which scared him. He had vowed, when Cheryl left, that
he wouldn’t get involved with another woman until Kyle was grown.
But Kyle wasn’t near adulthood yet, and here was Zoe—exotic,
intriguing, and obviously dangerous.

Travers sat on the edge of the bed. It
felt odd to be in a hotel room and not have anything to unpack. He
would have to get clothes for himself and for Kyle, as well as
toothbrushes and all the other essentials.

Travers felt overwhelmed
by that, too. He’d never been impulsive before. He’d never changed
his plans in the middle of an afternoon, not once in his entire
life.

Someone knocked at the door. In the
other room, Bartholomew Fang yipped and Kyle shushed him. Travers
pulled open his bedroom door as Kyle opened the door to the
suite.

Zoe walked in as if she were the one
staying here. Her stride was confident, but when Travers saw her
face, he realized that she didn’t seem confident at all. Her skin
was paler than it had been, and she had frown lines beside her
mouth. She dropped her purse beside the couch and leaned on it as
if she needed something to hold her up.