Absolutely Captivated (34 page)

Zoe wasn’t heading to the Triangle.
She was driving to one of the old neighborhoods, filled with
buildings that had become ramshackle in the desert sun. Bars on the
windows, walls with gang tags, and broken-down cars huddling next
to the curb made the area seem more dangerous than it
was.

She could feel Travers tense beside
her, and she didn’t care. She felt more at home in places like this
than she did in the bright and shiny Strip. The Strip was for
tourists. North Vegas was for locals.

She parked in an alley
behind a row of single-story buildings made of a bad combination of
wood and adobe. The original building, in the center, was made of
real adobe, and had once been the only business on this road. Over
the years, the other buildings sprang up around it, and Zoe could
remember, in the late 1950s, when this block looked nice and clean,
and the new buildings made the old building seem like it had been
freshly built, too.

Now all of them tottered against each
other like elderly friends heading into a buffet. Two buildings
housed pawn shops, two others hosted liquor stores, and two more
were closed.

The building in the
center, the original, was shrouded, the windows impossible to see.
Zoe didn’t care about that—the building housed one of those shops
only a handful of people knew about, because only a handful of
people needed to know.

Occasionally mortals—local
and tourist—wandered into the shop and thought they’d come upon a
curio store. Usually they ended up regretting their stop; they
picked up something cursed or too magical for them to understand,
and no matter how many warnings the clerks gave them, the mortals
bought the item anyway.

Zoe had no patience with
those people, but she did try to protect them. That’s why she had
never, in all her years in Vegas, brought anyone here
before.

Today, she felt she had no
choice.

No one else was parked in the alley,
and the nearby roads were deserted. The afternoon sun bleached the
area white, making the asphalt, the iron bars, even the once-pink
walls of the buildings seem to glow with reflected
light.

Travers’ skin wasn’t
glowing this time, though. The potion she’d cobbled together worked
as both healing lotion and sunscreen. He didn’t know that yet,
either, but he would by the time they got back to the
hotel.

He climbed out of the car.
She walked to his side of the car and protected it—not with an
invisibility spell (in this neighborhood that would be a neon
“Steal Me” sign) but with the Club, which she carried in her trunk
for just such an emergency.

Travers didn’t even ask
her about that—why she would use a regular, man-made protection
device in one neighborhood and a magical one in another.

That bothered her as well—shouldn’t he
be more curious about this stuff?—and then she realized that he
felt nervous in this alley, looking over his shoulder at the black
spray paint shouting its affiliations on the side of a nearby
Dumpster.

He was uneasy, and he was trying to
pretend that he wasn’t. Zoe smiled. It had been clear from the
moment she met him that he had led a sheltered life, even though it
had been in Los Angeles.

The longer he stayed around her, the
less sheltered it would become.

“Come on,” she said, and walked down
the two concrete steps that led into the back door of the shop. She
pulled the door open by the decorative iron bars that covered it,
listening to the hinges squeal as she stepped into the
darkness.

The transition from early afternoon
sunlight to badly lit shop was always a difficult one. When she
entered this place, she always felt as if she had to step through a
dark cavern to get into the real store. It was almost the way a
fade-out in a movie would feel.

For one entire minute, the world went
black: no sight, no sound, no texture.

But a lot of smells.
Incense and pot and something fetid, mixing with that ancient
sweet-plastic smell that drugstores used to have. Then the fetid
smell faded, the pot smell became expensive pipe tobacco, and the
incense became expensive soap, making the place seem even more
enticing.

The first few smells—and
the darkness—often discouraged the casual customer. (And if they
couldn’t be discouraged, well, that was their problem.) The other
smells were real—or as real as anything was in this particular
store.

Travers stayed close to Zoe, not
complaining, but she could still sense his unease. She hadn’t
warned him about this place, deciding that he had to get used to
surprises; they would be part of his life from now on.

Gradually, the darkness faded or her
eyes adjusted or the entrance spell wore off—she was never sure
which it was—and the room revealed itself, one small area at a
time. The store never looked the same: sometimes it resembled a
down-on-its luck antique store; sometimes it reminded her of a
1960s head shop; and sometimes it seemed like a casino gift shop
gone bad.

This time, the décor was a
mixture of 1960s kitsch and designer dinnerware outlet store. Mixed
in among the orange bubble lamps and the once state-of-the-art
hi-fis were very expensive crystal glassware. Near the
purple-and-blue plastic cups were stoneware dishes that would cost
most people a small fortune to buy new, and beside the square color
TV with its very own rabbit ears were Erte sculptures that Zoe
suspected were original.

The smells had settled
down now, too—the pipe smell faded, replaced by the dusty odor of a
desert antique store; the sweet-plastic drugstore odor remained,
but instead of the expensive soap smell, the dominant scent in the
room became the sharp, bubbly, gummy smell of Dippity
Do.

“What is this place?” Travers
whispered.

Zoe shushed him, but it was too
late.

Elmer the Shaman appeared
in a cascade of tiny, multicolored lights. His rumpled face looked
even older than it had the last time Zoe saw him, not three weeks
ago. His eyes were sunken into his skull, and his skin, pockmarked
from a smallpox epidemic at least three centuries before, seemed
even darker than usual.

He wore a bright
orange-and-green polyester shirt, its collar open 1970s disco
style, and a pair of matching green polyester bell-bottom slacks.
White platform boots peeked out from the bell-bottoms. He wore too
much jewelry—several gold chains around his neck, an oversized ruby
ring, and a watch three times larger than his wrist. The only thing
that really didn’t go with his 1970s outfit, however, was the
battered bowler hat that he had stuck on his head.

He chewed on a toothpick, obviously
trying to break his smoking habit once again, and peered at
Zoe.

“You don’t change, do you, girl?” His
voice was deep, laconic, and tired.

“Once every fifty years I redo my
style whether I need to or not,” Zoe said, even though not a word
was true. She did update her wardrobe all the time. She just didn’t
go from clothing period to clothing period in the space of a week
like Elmer did.

Zoe put her hand on Travers’ arm and
pulled him forward. She could see his reflection in one of the
glass-fronted curio cabinets. He looked like a man who had
swallowed something awful.

“Elmer,” Zoe said, “this is my friend
Travers. He’s new.”

Elmer tucked his hat back slightly,
and leaned forward on his platform boots. He looked like he was
going to tip over.

“I’ll say he’s new.” Elmer spoke with
the toothpick in his mouth. It bobbed every time his lower lip
moved. “New and worn at the same time, with a lot of out-of-control
power.”

Elmer pushed a finger in Travers’
chest.

“This is the last town you should be
in, boy,” Elmer said.

Travers gave Zoe a help-me
look.

She ignored it. “He’s here for a
reason.”

“He should leave before that reason
comes back to bite him,” Elmer said. “He’s bait, Zoe-babes. Let him
go, and find someone more suitable.”

“I’m not here to discuss my friends,”
Zoe said. It was unusual for Elmer to discuss them as
well.

“Friends?” Elmer stuck his hand
through her arm. His fingers gripped her skin a bit too hard, just
like they always did, as if he could draw strength from her just by
touching her. “Now Zoe, you know you’re more than
friends.”

She narrowed her gaze at him, first
looking at his hand on her arm, and then at his face. “He’s my
friend, Elmer.”

“Well, I certainly hope
not, because you’re wasting a lot of spark,” Elmer said. His grip
on her arm grew even tighter. Zoe wondered if he had shut off the
circulation.

“Spark?” Travers asked.

“Auras,” Elmer said. “You two—you just
spark off each other, like a fireworks show. Damn beautiful it is,
but dangerous if you don’t do something about it.”

“Like what?” Travers asked.

“Like not believing everything you
hear.” Zoe slipped her arm out of Elmer’s grasp. Her skin ached
where his fingers had been. “I’m here because I need a few things,
Elm, not because I need a reading.”

Elmer shoved his hands in his pockets
and shrugged. “Looks more like you need a reading.”

“A reading?” Travers asked.

Poor Travers. He really was out of his
depth. Zoe decided to throw him a tidbit.

“Elmer here is a shaman,” Zoe said.
“Or he thinks he’s one, at any rate.”

“Zoe,” Elmer said. “Just because
you’ve never taken advantage—“

“I don’t need your prophecies,” Zoe
said. “We get enough from our Fates.”

“Only one,” Elmer said. “How can you
guide your life with one prophecy? It’s why you run scared, why you
and this man are simply ‘friends,’ why you—”

“Elmer,” Zoe snapped. “That’s
enough.”

“Actually, I’m interested,” Travers
said.

“I’ll bet you are,” Zoe mumbled under
her breath.

“I see things,” Elmer said. “I explain
them.”

“You’re psychic,” Travers said as if
he had figured out the answer to the hardest test ever
written.

Elmer pushed the bowler back, away
from his brow. “No.”

His tone was so cold that Zoe
shivered.

“Has the mage education system become
that poor?” Elmer asked. “Who is his mentor? He shouldn’t be asking
questions like this.”

“That’s a long story,” Zoe
said.

Travers frowned. “I didn’t mean to
offend you. I just thought—”

“Thinking,” Elmer said. “That’s your
first mistake.”

Zoe stepped between Travers and Elmer.
She kept her back to Travers, and stared down at Elmer. “I came
here to shop, not to have a reading. If you don’t want my business,
then we can just leave.”

“Didn’t say that.” Elmer squashed the
bowler farther down his skull. “Just thought Tall Blond and
Confused here was interesting, that’s all.”

Travers stiffened beside her. She
could feel his irritation growing.

“Is there a reason we’re putting up
with this?” he asked her in not-quite-a-whisper. His lack of
subtlety made Elmer smile.

Zoe put a calming hand on Travers’
arm. “Yes. Elmer, for all his flamboyance, has some talents that I
lack.”

Elmer grinned. “I have a lot of
talents you lack, honey, and some we’d have to test.”

Zoe felt the muscles in
Travers’ arm move as he clenched his fists. She patted his arm,
then nodded at Elmer. “Let’s go in the main part of the store,
shall we?”

“I suppose,” Elmer said, “but your
boyfriend can’t come. His magic is still too wild.”

Zoe glanced at Travers. “Will you be
all right out here?”

He shrugged. “This is all new to me.
It’s your decision.”

His voice had a strained anger to it.
He obviously didn’t like being out of control.

“Just don’t touch anything,” Zoe said.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Fine.” Travers nodded
toward a small, red, upholstered chair. “Can I at least sit while I
wait?”

“I wouldn’t,” Elmer said, “unless you
want to visit 1755. It’s an antique, and it really doesn’t like
this century.”

“Is there any place he can be
comfortable?” Zoe asked.

“Not in here,” Elmer said with a grin.
He pulled back the curtain behind some of the curios. “Coming,
doll?”

Zoe sighed. She knew that Elmer
wouldn’t help her with Travers present.

“Sorry,” she said to Travers. “I’ll
hurry.”

“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I’ll
just stay out here and try not to speculate about what all this
stuff does.”

Zoe gave Travers an apologetic smile,
then followed Elmer through the curtain. She went through another
wave of darkness, and had a moment of doubt.

Maybe she didn’t know what she was
doing. Maybe she should simply tell the Fates they were on their
own, pull up her stakes and leave Vegas, get as far from the
nearest Faerie Circle as possible, and live out her life in
quiet.