Absolutely Captivated (21 page)

“It doesn’t matter,” Zoe said to the
Fates. “I’m not going to help you with whatever this is. I don’t
steal, and I don’t go into Faerie. So no matter how hard you push,
I’m not going to change my mind.”

The Fates looked at each
other.

“Then we are—what is that word?”
Clotho asked.

“Screwed,” Lachesis said with the
perfect dry tone.

“Not to mention the rest of the
world,” Atropos said.

Clotho leaned toward Zoe. “You do
realize that you could be murdering true love.”

“I doubt it,” Zoe said. “It has to
exist before it gets murdered.”

All three Fates hissed in a breath.
They looked as shocked as Zoe expected them to.

She pretended she didn’t notice, and
bit into one of the slices of pizza. The crust was crunchy on the
bottom, thick and rich in the middle, and the tomato sauce had a
bit of a bite to it. The pepperoni was the best she had tasted
outside of New York City.

“Zanthia,” Lachesis said in the most
dire tone Zoe had heard from the Fates since they arrived in Las
Vegas. “You do realize that what you’re saying is
heresy.”

Zoe held the pizza slice in front of
her mouth, poised to take another bite. “I don’t think there is
such a thing any longer, not so long as Zeus’s daughters hold
power.”

She took another bite, savoring the
mix of flavors.

“You’d side with them?” Atropos
asked.

“I’d just like to live my life,” Zoe
said after she swallowed.

“Without love?”

That last question came from Travers.
He had receded into himself again, and Zoe got no real sense of
him.

Kyle’s face was pale, though, and he
picked at his salad.

“I’ll live without it no matter who’s
in power,” Zoe said. “I’ve already resigned myself to
that.”

Travers set down his piece of pizza so
that no one would see his hand tremble. Zoe’s words upset him more
than he wanted to admit.

He had been enjoying the attraction
between them and part of him had been nursing a hope that the
attraction would become something more, something finer, something
longer lasting.

Something like love.

But how could that happen if she
didn’t believe in love?

Kyle pushed a slice of cucumber off
his plate and hid it in his napkin. Travers pretended not to
notice.

Bartholomew Fang sat on his hind legs
between Kyle and Travers, occasionally whining and pushing at them
with his front paws. Travers reached down and absently petted the
dog’s head.

He would wager if someone asked
Bartholomew Fang whether or not love existed, the dog would say
that it did. Of course, his definition might vary—he might say that
love was little more than a warm bed and a good meal—but with the
right person, that would be enough.

After Zoe had made her pronouncement,
her gaze connected with Travers’ and then slid away. Now she was
looking from Fate to Fate to Fate, probably resigning herself to
some other kind of fate.

The Fates seemed shocked to their
core. Travers had never thought of them as fundamentally serious
women—perhaps because he had not taken them seriously at first—but
now they looked like their world had come to an end.

Then the table rattled.

The glasses slid toward
the windows, and so did the plates, the silverware, and the serving
platters. Travers grabbed his dishes, then realized that he was
rattling, too. He bit the tip of his tongue and winced with pain.
Blood mixed with the taste of tomato sauce in the back of his
throat.

“It’s an earthquake!” Kyle said and
dove under the table.

He was right. Travers had lived
through enough of the things to recognize that moment of
indecision, that inability to accept that terra firma wasn’t so
firma after all.

He slid under the table as
well.

“What’re you doing?” Clotho
asked.

“Get down here!” Kyle said. “You could
die.”

Clotho, Lachesis, and
Atropos slipped under the table. Atropos was still holding a piece
of pizza and Bartholomew Fang lunged for it.

Travers caught him just in
time.

“There aren’t earthquakes in Las
Vegas,” Zoe said.

“There are earthquakes everywhere,”
Travers said. “Get down here. We’re in a hotel. If the ceiling
falls in—”

“I’ll hold it up,” Zoe
said.

The statement would have sounded
ridiculous coming from anyone else, but Travers didn’t doubt that
she would. Her shapely legs moved away from the table, her narrow
high heels making a clicking sound on the floor that was almost
inaudible under the rattling dishes.

“I’m not worried about the ceiling,”
Kyle whispered. “I’m worried about the floor.”

“What
is
this?” Lachesis
asked.

“It’s like that abysmal movie,”
Atropos said. “Remember? Clotho didn’t want to watch it because it
had an exclamation point in the title.”

“And I was right, wasn’t I?” Clotho
said, wrapping her arms around her legs. “Exclamation points in
movie titles are always bad.”

Travers couldn’t believe they were
discussing movies at a time like this. He put his arm around Kyle
and pulled the boy close. Kyle grabbed Bartholomew Fang, who
whimpered in protest.

“Now isn’t that strange?” Zoe
asked.

Her feet were near the window which,
if she hadn’t had magic, Travers would have warned her
against.

“What’s strange?” Kyle asked, his
voice vibrating.

“No one has stopped driving. No one
has run onto the street. Everything looks normal outside,” Zoe
said.

“Oh, dear,” Lachesis said.

“Better trace the magic,” Atropos
said.

“Magic?” Travers asked.

And then blue smoke filled
the room—powder-blue smoke that smelled faintly of Limburger
cheese. A cackling laugh that Travers didn’t recognize followed,
and then a wizened face peered under the table cloth.

“Hiding, ladies?” The laugh apparently
belonged to the face, which seemed to belong to a man who bore a
strong resemblance to the apple witches Travers’ sisters used to
make when he was a kid. “And you brought friends.”

Clotho sighed. “What do you want,
Nero?”

“Nero?” Travers
asked, feeling his heart rate increase. “
The
Nero?”

“Of course,
the
Nero,” said the
apple witch, sliding under the table to join them. He was wearing a
purple satin shirt with poet sleeves and white bell-bottom pants,
also made of satin. His hair was silvery black, and his eyes were
the same odd color.

He reached for Travers. Nero’s hand
was as shriveled as his face. “This one has raw magic,
ladies.”

Nero grinned, which made his eyes
virtually disappear among the wrinkles.

“Raw magic is so easy to steal. How
did you let him by you? I thought you were supposed to protect all
the baby magicians so that they couldn’t lose their
powers.”

Travers ducked so that Nero couldn’t
touch him.

“Leave him alone!” Kyle said, as
Bartholomew Fang growled.

Nero’s eyes lit up. “Another one. And
so young. The power’s not ready in him. But I can use it. I can
definitely use it…”

He reached out again, and this time,
Atropos slapped his hand. He clutched it to his chest and looked
like he was about to cry.

“He’s not
the
Nero,” Lachesis
said, with contempt. “If by Nero, you mean that horrible little
Roman man with delusions of grandeur.”

“This one is, though, the first Nero,”
said Atropos.

“And he’s been trouble since the day
he first wandered into the halls of Justice,” Clotho
said.

“Only then, he didn’t have much
magic.” Lachesis narrowed her eyes. “You’ve been
stealing.”

Nero laughed. “Go ahead, punish me. I
hear you ladies are out of power and magickless.”

Kyle bit his lower lip, which he
always did when the lip threatened to tremble and reveal how
frightened he was. Bartholomew Fang continued to growl, baring his
teeth as he did so. Maybe he did deserve the name “Fang” after all.
Those teeth were mighty impressive.

“We’re merely—” Clotho started to
speak but didn’t get to finish. Instead, she and the other two
Fates vanished.

Nero looked at Travers in
surprise. Travers was equally surprised. He had no idea they could
do that, either.

Then Nero smiled. “Well, now that
they’re gone—”

Duct tape appeared on Nero’s mouth. He
lifted his hands toward it, and suddenly they were bound with duct
tape as well. He made little “mmph-mmph” sounds, and pushed himself
away from Travers with his feet.

Then more duct tape
appeared, wrapping itself around Nero’s ankles. Little puffs of
smoke—that silly blue, smelling of Limburger—appeared around his
face and his hands, as if he were trying to free himself and
couldn’t.

“Nero
!” Three female voices spoke in
a rough unison. “
You shall not disturb us
or our friends again. Warn everyone you see that the rumors about
the Fates are untrue. You shall escape serious punishment this
time, but in the next, you will receive exactly what’s coming to
you.
”

Nero’s oddly colored eyes grew wide
and filled with tears. He struggled, but he couldn’t free
himself.

Travers wanted to get out from under
the table, but he couldn’t. Kyle was rooted to his spot. And
Bartholomew Fang was drooling as he growled, making him look as
fearsome as a dachshund could.

“Begone!”
the voices said, and then Nero vanished, this
time without the blue smoke. The smell lingered, oddly strong,
which made Travers wonder if the cheese odor wasn’t Nero’s own
unfortunate personal scent.

The table cloth went up and Zoe peered
beneath it. “You gonna stay under there all day?”

Kyle looked at her as if she were his
savior. “Is the earthquake over?”

“It never was,” she said, extending
him her hand. “It’s a sign of badly used magic when someone about
to transport in from somewhere else gets the vibrations
wrong.”

Kyle crawled out from under the table.
Bartholomew Fang still growled. Travers put his hand on the dog’s
back, and Fang whirled, snapping and snarling.

Travers held his hands up like an
outlaw about to be arrested. “It’s just me.”

The dog breathed heavily through his
long snout, then sat on his haunches. He looked tinier than he had
a moment ago.

“You’re one tough pooch,” Travers
said.

“And you’re one strange man.” Zoe was
peering under the table again. “You want to come out
now?”

He did. He scooted out to find Kyle on
a nearby couch, a pillow clasped against his stomach.

“That man,” Kyle whispered. “He was
going to hurt us.”

“He wasn’t going to hurt anyone,” Zoe
said. “He was just after the Fates. Which reminds me.”

She snapped her fingers.

The Fates reappeared in the center of
the living room floor, only they sat in the same positions they had
held when they were under the table.

“—
experimenting,” Clotho
finished. Then she looked around, surprised.

“What is the meaning of this?”
Lachesis asked. But her voice, which should have sounded booming,
actually sounded tiny and a bit scared.

“Someone tampered with us,” Atropos
said.

“I made you disappear.” Zoe remained
near the table. She took a piece of pizza off her plate. “That
idiot Nero had no idea I was in the room.”

“So?” Clotho asked, her voice
shaking.

“So,” Travers said, understanding what
happened, “Zoe made it seem like you still have magic.”

“I bought you a few days of
protection,” Zoe said. “But not much. A lot of people aren’t happy
with you all. You never did make many friends.”

“Our job wasn’t to make friends,”
Lachesis said.

“We’re judges,” Atropos said. “We’re
supposed to be impartial.”

“Unfortunately,” Clotho said,
“impartiality often leads to difficult rulings.”

“Which leads to difficult sentences,”
Lachesis said.

“Which leads to difficult
interpersonal relations,” Atropos said.

“It’s just easier to say that most
people hate you,” Zoe said, and then took a bite of
pizza.

That seemed harsh to Travers. Just
because the Fates had done their job well didn’t mean they were
despised. But he didn’t know a lot about this magic system he was
supposed to be part of. And, if he admitted it, that Nero guy had
frightened him.