Absolutely Captivated (33 page)

The
Readers Digest Condensed
version was, as best as he understood it, that the Faeries
abandoned their woodsy, nature-vibe lifestyle sometime after
Christianity made it into the British Isles, but sometime before
industrialization. Most of the Faeries moved to America, where they
thought they could live in peace and harmony, mingling with the
natives. Then they realized that the natives had their own form of
magic (one that Zoe refused to discuss—saying a third magical
reality was more than Travers could bear. He figured he had the
right to decide what he could bear and what he couldn’t, but he’d
already irritated her once today, so he decided not to irritate her
again).

A lot of the Faerie myths were true,
just like a lot of the mage myths were true, but the truth was
hidden in the storytelling.

“What does that mean for us?” Travers
asked.

“It means we can’t trust them,” Zoe
said. She was still leaning against the desk, still looking
beautiful, and still enticing him, whether she was trying or
not.

Travers kept his eyes on hers, so he
wouldn’t look at those knees, which led to the thighs, which led
to—

“I figured that much out on my own,”
Travers said. “About not trusting them, that is. What I haven’t
figured is how all this matters to our case.”

The “our” came out before he could
stop it, but Zoe didn’t seem to notice. Or if she did notice, she
didn’t mind.

“You know the story of Rip Van
Winkle?” Zoe asked.

“Yeah,” Travers said.

“The story’s true,” Zoe said. “A lot
of the stories you heard about that part of New England were true.
The Faeries were trying to get rid of the Europeans who might
recognize them. What do you think happened to Roanoke?”

“Huh?”

“The first colony, the one where all
the colonists mysteriously vanished?”

“I’ve never heard of it,” Travers
said.

Zoe crossed her arms. She shook her
head. “What do they do for education these days?”

“I studied math.”

“I studied everything.” She sighed.
“Of course, there was a lot less of everything when I was
young.”

She made herself sound ancient. It was
her fourth mention of age. Clearly it bothered her, and he was
going to see if he could change it.

“Anyway,” she said. “Rip
van Winkle, the Headless Horsemen, all Faerie tricks to get rid of
the colonists.”

“That worked,” Travers
said.

Zoe smiled. “The Faeries
have always underestimated mortals.”

“And mages haven’t?” Travers
asked.

Zoe shrugged and stood. Her skirt fell
across her knees, and Travers felt a stab of disappointment.
Another opportunity lost. Not that he was going to take advantage
of it.

“That’s the nice thing about focusing
on love,” Zoe said. “You don’t worry about advantage or
disadvantage. Your concern is with finding the perfect mate and
happily ever after.”

“Then how come all of the mages I’ve
met are single?” Travers asked.

Her expression fell for a brief
moment. It was as if she couldn’t control the muscles on her face.
And then she shrugged again, a slightly empty smile crossing her
lips.

“You haven’t met very many of us,” she
said and turned away.

She grabbed some papers
off her desk, shuffled them, then stacked them. She sighed once,
and said, “Faeries are tricksters. That’s what they did to old Rip
Van Winkle. They tricked him out of twenty years of his life. What
the story doesn’t tell you is that they raided his land and his
business, taking items of magical power. He was a strong believer
in many things, and the Faeries wanted those things. But he
recognized them for what they were. And as punishment, they kept
him in magic time for longer than they needed to. He lost
everything. Wife, children, friends. Even his country.”

Her voice was soft.

“That’s what you’re afraid of?”
Travers asked. “Afraid they’ll trick you out of
everything?”

She shook her head. “They’ve become a
lot more sophisticated now. They can take magic from you or even
from me in the right circumstances—and if they have enough
power.”

“You mentioned that
yesterday.”

“What I didn’t mention
yesterday is that the Faeries have stockpiled magical items all
over the United States. There are places in this country where they
keep the most important items.” Zoe ran a hand through her hair.
The hair tangled, then fell against her cheeks.

Travers wanted to smooth it out, but
he didn’t touch her. Not after that earlier encounter.

“The Faeries use those
items to maintain their powers and also to maintain what they call
Faerie—their mystical home.”

“Like your Mount Olympus.”

She gave him a sideways glance. “Look
at your map, sweetie. Mount Olympus exists.”

“But no one ever saw Greek
gods living there,” Travers said.

Zoe raised her eyebrows at him, then
shook her head slightly. “Mount Olympus is the highest mountain in
Greece. The top is always hidden behind a layer of clouds. And
there’s a reason for that.”

“Yeah,” Travers said. “At a certain
level in the atmosphere—”

“No,” Zoe said. “It’s magic. There is
a palace on top of that mountain and the Powers that Be live there.
The Muses live on the mountainside and manage to keep their homes
invisible most of the time, and the judicial courts, it is said,
float among the clouds.”

“You don’t know where they are?”
Travers couldn’t quite keep the sarcasm from his voice.

“No one does.” Zoe set the papers
down. “You’ve seen how people are reacting to the Fates lacking
their powers. Imagine if people knew where the Fates lived and
worked. America didn’t invent going postal, you know. You just
named it.”

“So the Faeries didn’t
have a mountain,” Travers said.

“They could have, I
suppose.” Zoe tapped her computer keyboard, bent over it, and the
printer snapped to life. “I mean, they were in Europe, after all.
But early on, Faeries lived in tribes, and they were pretty hostile
to each other.”

The printer beeped twice and then
began spitting out paper.

“But the Faeries chose to
create their hideaway out of thin air, and they’ve continued that
practice in the States. They have several, and they’re all
interconnected. Magical totems keep the things going. If you can
imagine that Faerie itself is like an oven, and the totems provide
the electricity to keep the thing running, then you have an idea of
what we’re talking about.”

She took the papers out of the
printer, and rolled them in one hand. Then she shut the printer
off.

“Okay,” Travers said. “So there are
thousands of magical items.”

“Millions,” Zoe said.
“Maybe billions. So many that only a few can keep track of them.
But, thanks to the Internet, and all those internal Faerie
conflicts, we actually have a chance of figuring out where some
items are stored.”

“Internal conflicts?”

She waved her hand, dismissing that.
“As I said, they’re tribal. These conflicts have existed since the
first ear got pointed. Don’t even try to follow it all.”

“I don’t see how it
relates to the Internet.”

“Faerie eBay,” she said
with a grin.

“Faerie what?”

“eBay,” she said. “Except
that it’s not really eBay, since that’s a trademarked name and a
real business. But Faeries do steal and then trade magical items,
always looking for the better totem. Some of those items actually
are on eBay—original rabbits’ feet from the 1930s, wishing-well
pennies, things like that, only with descriptions that make them
appealing only to Faeries in the know.”

Travers shook his head. The secret
worlds had secret worlds, which probably had more secret worlds.
And they all seemed to have secret passwords and understandings and
ways of doing business.

No wonder Zoe didn’t want to tell him
about any other magical systems.

“So we go on eBay and look
for a spinning wheel?” Travers asked.

“Tried that late last
night,” Zoe said. “I found a lot of spinning wheels, but none old
enough and none with the right description. So I had to follow a
few digital trails. I managed to locate Faerie eBay. Its domain
changes from week to week, and finding it is always a
trick.”

“Of course,” Travers
muttered.

“But I found it and a few other sites,
and managed to discern that the wheel hasn’t been on the
market.”

“Recently?”

“Ever,” Zoe said. “So whoever
originally stole it still has it.”

“Okay.” Travers’ headache
from the day before was returning. Was there a maximum amount of
information the brain could handle? He didn’t know, but if he had
to guess, he was beginning to think he had reached it. “There was
no Internet several thousand years ago, so that means the trail’s a
dead end.”

“Ah, Travers,” Zoe said, slapping the
rolled papers against her hand. “You’ve forgotten the whole point
of this discussion.”

“There was a point?” he asked, then
realized he had said that out loud.

But Zoe didn’t seem to notice. “There
was. Myths, legends, slipping into the mortal consciousness. I
looked up fairy tales and local legends, starting in Greece and
working my way outward.”

“Legends about spinning
wheels?”

Zoe nodded. “There are more than you
would think.”

“I’m surprised there’s even one,”
Travers said.

Zoe sighed. “You have to start paying
attention. The Fates told you the first one. It was about
them.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, although he
wasn’t sure he remembered a fairy tale. He remembered them saying
they had a spinning wheel, and that was all.

“Anyway, I traced the
wheel to the dominant tribe of Faeries, the ones that lived in the
British Isles for so long. That’s good luck for us.”

“It is?” Travers asked.

Zoe nodded. “It means that the wheel
is somewhere in North America. When the tribe came over, it wasn’t
going to leave its most powerful possessions behind.”

“‘
Somewhere in North
America’ is a big space,” Travers said.

“But here’s the great thing about
Faerie,” Zoe said. “The rules of time and space don’t exactly
apply.”

Travers rubbed the bridge of his nose.
That headache was growing worse. “Meaning?”

“Meaning that like Rip Van Winkle, if
you go into Faerie and aren’t careful, you’ll lose years in the
space of minutes.”

“Oh, good,” Travers said.

“And if you enter Faerie in Las Vegas,
you can go anywhere on the North American continent—provided
there’s a Faerie portal leading out.”

“I can go anywhere on the continent
now,” Travers said.

“In a matter of seconds,” Zoe
said.

“Oh.” Travers frowned. “But I’d lose
years.”

“No,” she said. “Distances aren’t
as—distant—in Faerie. They’re only as long as you want them to
be.”

He leaned forward in his
chair, suddenly very uncomfortable. “It sounds like you want to go
into Faerie now. What happened to ‘it could be the death of us,’
and all that danger stuff?”

She bit her lower lip, then seemed to
catch herself. “I’m hoping we won’t have to go in. I’m hoping we
can get someone to go for us. And it won’t take long, and we’ll be
done with helping the Fates. They’ll become someone else’s
problem.”

“I suppose you have someone in mind,”
Travers said.

“Yes,” Zoe said, and her smile was
radiant. “I certainly do.”

Zoe knew her plan verged
on crazy. But she also knew that if a person couldn’t trust her
friends, she couldn’t trust anyone.

She was going to have to go to
Herschel and Gaylord. But first, she wanted to double-check her
information.

She wasn’t going to
explain this part of the plan to Travers. He didn’t need to know
that she had a bit more research to finish before sending anyone
into Faerie. Zoe managed to get him out of her office by promising
lunch. She didn’t tell him until they pulled up outside Rigo’s
Tacos that lunch would be a fried pork burrito on the
run.

To his credit, Travers didn’t
complain. He just took a lot of extra napkins, and ate in
silence.

Zoe sipped the take-out ice tea she’d
gotten at Rigo’s and drove one-handed through the North Las Vegas
traffic.

North Las Vegas was a
different city than Vegas. North Las Vegas sprang up around the Air
Force base, and never really took off the way Vegas proper did. But
North Vegas had its own charm, and it felt like a real city, with
truly ethnic neighborhoods and old buildings ripe for
redevelopment, and urban renewal taking place in the Golden
Triangle section.