Absolutely Captivated (38 page)

Zoe wove her way through
the Las Vegas Boulevard traffic, finally getting off the main drag
and onto the back roads that took her to the hotel. In the
midafternoon sunlight, it almost looked seedy, which was odd,
considering that the hotels that used to be considered seedy—the
ones with gambling—were the ones that looked glamorous
now.

As she drove into the hotel’s public
parking ramp, she thought she saw three men loitering near the
front door. They were wearing black leather despite the heat, and
they had pointed ears. They also looked familiar.

Her back tensed, and she would have
reversed the car, only someone else was following her into the lot.
She found a spot quickly, promising to meet Travers upstairs, and
hurried down to the front.

But the three men were
gone.

Zoe used her magical senses, trying to
find a trail, but she saw nothing. Rather than relieve her, it made
her even more suspicious.

Were the Faeries coming
after the Fates? And if so, why? Elmer had hinted there was more to
the Faeries and Fates’ conflict that met the eye, and Zoe wondered
if these three were part of it.

She went in the front lobby of the
hotel and asked the manager to alert Travers’ room should three men
with pointed ears enter wearing black leather.

It was a tribute to Vegas’s
tolerance—and its reputation for any and all kinds of visitors—that
the manager didn’t look at Zoe as if she were crazy. He merely
nodded, smiled, and promised he would let his employees
know.

She didn’t feel as
reassured as she wanted to. If the three men were Faeries, they
would know how to slip past any mortals who were looking for
them.

The key was, however, that
the Faeries wouldn’t know anyone was looking for them.

Zoe might get lucky.

At least, she hoped so.

Kyle rolled over on his bed in the
drape-darkened bedroom. Fang tried to curl up next to Kyle, but
Kyle was in too much pain. He had the air-conditioner on frostbite,
but it wasn’t doing much for the heat radiating off his
skin.

He had forgotten how miserable sunburn
could be, how he could stay hot even when he really wasn’t. The
last time he had a sunburn was the time his dad had taken him to
the emergency room, and the staff there had yelled at his
dad.

Kyle remembered some cool lotion on
his skin, something to make him sleep, and not much else. He wished
he could remember a few other things so he could get more
comfortable.

Part of his discomfort,
though, was his stomach. He couldn’t lay on it because it was still
too full. He wasn’t exactly queasy anymore, but he wasn’t exactly
not-queasy, either. He was kinda bloated, like he might swell up
and explode, which would hurt even more if his skin got
tugged.

Outside his bedroom, he could hear
canned laughter from the television. The Fates had found him when
he had come back from taking Fang out for his walk. They were
worried about him, they said: he hadn’t acted like himself in the
elevator; they thought maybe something was wrong; and they were
sure that they could help.

Kyle told them all he needed was a
nap, but they didn’t believe him. Still, they let him go into his
room and close the door, but they hovered outside of it, and he
could sense their worry.

He would have been better off if they
had just gone back to their own room. He was too hot and queasy to
think about those three men, and he didn’t want to deal with the
Fates, either.

So when the phone rang, the first
thing Kyle felt was annoyance. If the Fates were real grown-ups,
they would answer it. But of course, they weren’t. For a minute, he
thought of letting the phone just ring, and then he realized that
the call might be from his dad.

Kyle rolled over on
his stomach, regretted it as he did so, sat up, and picked up the
receiver. He wanted to answer
What
? the way people did on
television when they were annoyed, but he’d been raised
well.

He said, “Hello,” instead.

“Kyle, baaby?” The voice
belonged to his Aunt Megan. She had the most distinctive voice of
any woman he’d ever known. It was deep, almost masculine, but it
had this female quality that made all men notice when she
spoke.

“Aunt Megan,” Kyle said, and to his
embarrassment, had to blink hard so that he wouldn’t burst into
tears.

“You all right, baby?” she asked. “You
sound funny.”

“I ate too much,” he said, which was
true. He didn’t want to tell her about all the other strange stuff
that was going on.

“That happens when you go on
vacation,” she said, apparently not noticing that anything else was
wrong. “Is your dad there?”

“Nope,” Kyle said.

“You’re alone?” She sounded
alarmed.

“Oh, no,” Kyle said. “Some friends are
here watching me.”

Not that they were true friends of
his, even though he liked them, and they weren’t technically
watching. But he’d heard his Aunt Megan verbally beat up his dad
before because his dad didn’t follow the prescribed child-rearing
fads that Aunt Megan had learned about in school.

“Well, your dad called me and it
sounded urgent,” she said.

“It is,” Kyle said. This was the
answer to his prayers. A real grown-up, not a kid in an adult’s
body like the Fates. “Dad has some business to do here, and he was
wondering if he could pay for your trip if you would baby-sit
me.”

Kyle hated to use the word baby-sit,
but he knew his dad would.

“When?” Aunt Megan asked.

“As soon as possible,” Kyle
said.

“Oh, he always does this to me,” she
muttered, and Kyle knew she hadn’t meant him to hear that. “There’s
no one else he can ask? Mom, maybe? Or Viv?”

“Grandma and Grandpa say I’m too
difficult, remember?” Kyle winced as he spoke those words. His
grandparents really loved him, but he’d scared them from the time
he was little and he could read their minds.

“And Vivian’s on her honeymoon. I’m so
ditzy I forgot.”

Kyle could almost hear his Aunt
Megan’s hand hit her forehead as she remembered. She always called
herself ditzy but she wasn’t. She just thought a lot about a lot of
things, and never really focused on the world around
her.

In that way, she had a lot in common
with the Fates.

“Tell you what,” she said, “I’ll call
back tonight—I’m assuming your dad’ll be back by then—and I’ll let
you know if I can rearrange my schedule. Okay?”

Kyle let out a sigh of relief. He
tried not to make it too audible. “Okay,” he said.

But she had already hung up. He slid
back onto the pillows, which were clammy and too hot, and closed
his eyes.

He wished he hadn’t had so much ice
cream.

He wished he’d remembered his
sunscreen.

He wished his dad were here. He wished
he was home, in his own bed. He wished he didn’t have anything more
to wish for, as he finally drifted off to sleep.

By the time Zoe made it to Travers’
hotel room, she could sense something was wrong. She hurried off
the elevator to find Travers’ hotel room door open, the TV blaring
the Fox News theme to the entire hallway.

Zoe saw no one when she stepped
inside. She closed the door, shut off the television, and finally
noticed the Fates, huddling in front of Kyle’s bedroom
door.

“What’s going on?” Zoe
asked.

Clotho gave Zoe a mournful look.
Lachesis sighed, and Atropos leaned her head against the
wall.

Their reluctance to speak alarmed Zoe
even more. She pushed her way past them and into the
bedroom.

The overhead light was on, and so was
a lamp beside the bed. The room was so cold it made the Arctic seem
like a balmy summer vacation spot.

Bartholomew wiggled his way toward
her, his tail at half-mast, his entire body an apology for
something she didn’t yet understand.

Travers was sitting on the side of the
bed, talking softly. Zoe could see Kyle’s bare feet, which looked
oddly red and swollen. She hurried to Travers’ side.

Kyle was leaning against the pillow,
his skin an alarming shade of red. He obviously had the same
problem with sunburn that Travers had. Only unlike Travers, Kyle’s
face beneath the burn was pale. He looked very sick, and Zoe
couldn’t tell why.

“What’s going on?” Zoe
asked.

“Don’t feel good.” For the first time
since she’d met him, Kyle sounded like the little boy he was. His
face was tear-stained and a teardrop hung on the bottom of his chin
like a reluctant skydiver.

“Sunburn?” Zoe asked Travers
softly.

“Severe,” Travers said. “I’d ask for
more of that miracle lotion, but I’m not sure it’ll help. I’m going
to have to take him to the emergency room.”

“Let me try first,” Zoe
said.

Travers scooted aside to
allow Zoe space on the bed. Bartholomew sat at her feet, whining.
The Fates still huddled in the doorway.

Kyle moaned.

“That doesn’t sound like sunburn,” Zoe
said, wondering how she knew what sunburn sounded like.

“It isn’t,” Travers said,
apparently understanding her. “It’s—what, Kyle?—three milkshakes, a
burger, fries, and more things than I want to think
about.”

“A stomachache and a
sunburn?” Zoe asked.

Kyle nodded miserably.

“Yep.” Travers’ tone was lacerating.
“I come home worried that my son is under magical assault and I
discover instead that he’s just struck by good old-fashioned adult
incompetence.”

Zoe glanced over her shoulder at the
Fates. They bowed their heads, and looked as miserable as Kyle. She
didn’t try to defend them, even though she could have argued that
they wouldn’t know better. After all, they weren’t used to dealing
with mortal children. They were used to dealing with highly
temperamental mages.

“It wasn’t their fault,
Dad,” Kyle said. “I forgot the sunblock.”

“No,” Travers said, “it was mine, and
I’m sorry.”

His hand hovered over Kyle’s arm, as
if he were afraid to touch him.

“I’ve never seen a burn quite this
bad,” Travers said.

“Here,” Zoe said, “let me.”

“Zoe, I think we should let doctors
take care of this,” Travers said.

“And have Kyle be miserable for days?”
Zoe leaned against Travers. “Let me, and if it doesn’t work, then
I’ll take him to the emergency room myself. Is that
okay?”

She asked this last of
Kyle.

He turned those miserable eyes on her.
His expression looked so much like Travers’ that for a moment, she
thought she was seeing double.

“It’s okay,” Kyle said to
Travers.

Travers nodded, and she felt the depth
of his worry. Sunburn these days carried more than discomfort with
it. People now understood that a few serious sunburns in a lifetime
could result in skin cancer later on.

Zoe would reverse any
damage, though, and then she’d make extra sunblock for Kyle, with a
lot more healing power than she’d used on Travers. Maybe she’d redo
his, too. If he had the same kind of skin when he was young, he
probably suffered through burns like this, too. He was probably at
risk as well for serious side effects.

And that explained his curtness. He
understood, better than anyone, how painful such a sunburn
was.

“I’m going to have to touch you,” Zoe
said to Kyle. “It’ll be uncomfortable at first, but I promise it’ll
get better.”

“Okay.” Kyle’s voice was little more
than a whisper. He closed his eyes.

Zoe started with Kyle’s belly. The
poor boy’s stomach was distended, probably from gas and discomfort,
and it radiated pain. Zoe laid her hand on it, and spelled the pain
away.

Kyle’s eyes fluttered open. There were
tears in the corners. “What’d you do?” he whispered.

“Just eased the stomachache,” Zoe
said.

“Man, you should bottle that.” Kyle
smiled at her. “That’s a lot better.”

“Good,” Zoe said. “Now just
relax.”

She created more skin
potion and conjured it in a plastic bottle that looked like
Spider-Man, because she knew about Kyle’s love of comic book
characters. Then she squirted some of the lotion on her
fingers.

As she worked the boy’s skin, taking
the heat and pain and damage out of it, she felt a tenderness that
was foreign to her.

Her hand caressed Kyle’s face. His
eyelids fluttered, and the tears in the corners fell against his
skin. She wiped them away, then continued to rub the lotion on his
temples, watching the redness recede and his normal light skin tone
take its place.

She didn’t give him a tan like she had
with Travers. A tan left some of the damage, and she didn’t want to
do that. Not with Kyle.