Absolutely Captivated (47 page)

They would use it to destroy
her.

She was hemmed in. She couldn’t move.
She couldn’t use her magic.

But she had to find a way out. She had
to get out and do something with the wheel.

She was here to steal
power, too, only she wanted all of it, and she wanted to return it
to the Fates. She didn’t want these people to control her
world.

She didn’t want these people to change
Travers or Kyle or anyone she loved.

She had to fight.

If she could only figure out
how.

Then Travers saw her. Or
more correctly, he saw a crowd gathering near the hub, surrounding
someone—that someone just a slight bit taller than everyone else.
Zoe’s dark hair looked different from the Faeries’ hair—it had a
different texture, a glossiness, and Travers had a sense of her,
even from this distance.

She wasn’t scared, but she was close.
She knew she was trapped, and she didn’t know how to break
free.

He wasn’t sure what to do,
either. He just knew he had to do something quickly because if he
didn’t, they would grab him, too.

He ran down the center of the space
between the spokes to the hub, and when he reached it, he shoved
his way through the growing crowd around Zoe.

His height helped. His height and his
strength, and probably his underlying panic.

“Mine,” he said as he moved. “Back
off. She’s mine. Mine.”

And to his surprise,
people did. They moved away, as if he were going to hurt them. Then
they must have realized that he wasn’t, because they closed back
in, trapping him just like they had trapped her.

He kept pushing forward with great
determination, certain he would get to her.

And suddenly he was
there, suddenly she was in his arms, and she was clinging to him,
and she
was
scared, which scared him because Zoe wasn’t the type to be
frightened easily.

Everything shifted around him, and he
suddenly saw the room as she saw it—a circular pit, with a roulette
wheel in its center. The roulette wheel as the hub.

The roulette wheel—the former spinning
wheel of the Fates—was the heart of Faerie.

Travers didn’t have a chance to figure
out what that meant. He figured he had only one opportunity, and he
would take it. He yanked Zoe through the crowd, heading toward the
wheel instead of away from it.

The Fates had said the
wheel augmented their powers, and unless he missed his guess, it
would augment his. And even though he didn’t know a lot about
magic, he had transported himself once—twice, if you counted
getting back, and by gum (was that a phrase?) he would do it
again.

Zoe clung to him, moving
with him, saying something—although he couldn’t hear what with the
pounding of the machine here and the murmur of Faerie voices,
something about not letting her get away.

Then Travers grabbed a corner of the
wheel, and it spun him upward, away from the crowd. Zoe came with
him, rolling with it, trapped in the red light, making her face
look blood-covered.

“We have to take it,” she was saying.
“The wheel. They’re going to use it to destroy the
world.”

But Travers didn’t have enough magic
to take the wheel, and he wasn’t sure what would happen if he
tried, as integrated as it was into Faerie itself.

Instead, he let the power
of it burn into his fingers, and then he thought of his hotel and
Kyle and safety—

Suddenly Travers shot
straight upward in the air. Zoe clung to him, her arms wrapped
around his neck as if she were afraid he would drop her.

He held her with one arm.
The other was pointed upward—the one that had touched the wheel—and
his hand was lost in a large, white light.

Then his hand became a fist, and he
pounded through solid ground, but felt no pain.

He burst upward, like a man on top of
a geyser, and then fell to the ground, Zoe landing on him, knocking
the wind out of him.

They were lying in the middle of
Fremont Street, right smack in the middle of the no-driving area,
under all the neon lights. The Four Queens was only a few yards
away, and their logo blurred so that Travers thought he saw three
Fates instead.

Zoe stood before he did, and she
helped him up. A few people passed by, giving them sideways looks,
but not stopping for any reason. They probably thought Zoe and
Travers were drunk.

He wasn’t drunk, but he was
tired.

The hole in the ground closed, and the
concrete reassembled as if it hadn’t split. Zoe helped Travers
stumble to the sidewalk. His eyes took a moment to adjust to the
neon lights, and then he leaned against a support column that held
up one of the many signs.

“You saved me,” Zoe said.

“I couldn’t let you be down there
alone,” Travers said.

“But you shouldn’t have left Kyle.”
She was running her hands on his face. “What happened to
you?”

He touched his upswept eyebrows.
“Gaylord.”

“Gaylord?”

And then Travers realized that she
didn’t know any of it—how Gaylord had come for him, how Travers had
found her. Or even why he had come.

“I left Kyle,” Travers said, “because
you needed me.”

“It was okay,” she said.
“I know that he’s more important to you. I was going down there for
all of us. The Faeries want to destroy the world—”

“And you can’t stop them, not all
alone,” Travers said.

“I had to try.” Zoe was
trembling.

Travers wrapped his arms around her
and pulled her close. Then he kissed her. And kissed her, and
kissed her one more time.

Finally, he pulled away. He smoothed
the hair off her face, touched her cheeks, and said, “You were the
world they were going to destroy, and I couldn’t let them. I love
you, Zoe. I can’t imagine life without you.”

“But Kyle—”

“Has already told me what an idiot I
am for not taking advantage of the situation.”

“Situation?” Zoe asked.

“He thinks you like me.”

“Oh,” she said with a very soft smile.
“He’s right. I do.”

Travers and Zoe caught a
cab back to the hotel, and all the way there, Zoe went back and
forth between elation—Travers had come for her! She had survived
Faerie!—and despair. She hadn’t stopped the Faeries. She hadn’t
stolen the wheel. She hadn’t changed anything.

She couldn’t even save the
Fates.

Travers hadn’t taken his
arm from around her shoulder. They pressed close together, and she
didn’t mind. She even fantasized that her prophecy might be
true—that what he said back on Fremont Street wasn’t in the heat of
the moment, that it was actually true, that he loved her. That he
was her soulmate, and she had found him near Faerie.

She hadn’t lost herself
inside Faerie because of Travers. Because somehow he figured how to
use the wheel to augment his magic, somehow he knew it would
protect them from the Faeries, and it would get them
free.

The cab let them off in front of the
hotel. The sun was coming up, sending a golden light over the
mountains and into the valley. The city was almost beautiful, and
Zoe wished she could hold onto this moment.

Travers took her hand and led her into
the hotel.

“Where’re we going?” she
asked.

“If Kyle’s awake, he’s worried,”
Travers said.

“May we see the Fates first?” Zoe
asked. She wanted to get that meeting out of the way, to let them
know that she failed. “I can go alone if you want.”

Travers gave her a warm
smile. His face was his own again—no flying Faerie eyebrows, no
strange, pointed ears. She had forgotten, just in those few hours,
how good-looking he really was.

“I’m sticking with you from now on,”
he said, and as they got in the elevator, he put his arm around her
waist. She slid her arm around him.

None of the men she’d
known, or any of the people she’d known, had ever made her feel
like this. She had been willing to give up everything, not so she
could be with him, but so he could remain happy.

She had never been willing to do that
for anyone before.

The elevator doors opened and she
walked with Travers to the Fates’ room. He knocked.

“You’re sure they’re there?” Zoe
whispered.

“I hope so,” he said. “My sister Megan
should be with Kyle by now.”

At that moment, the door to the suite
opened. Clotho was wearing a pink negligée of the Doris Day
variety, lots of flowing nylon and feathers.

“You’re back!” Clotho said, with a
smile. She stepped away from the door. “They’re back!”

She called this last to
the other Fates, who appeared in the doorways of their rooms like
refuges from a 1960s bedroom farce. Lachesis wore a green negligée
that matched Clotho’s, and Atropos wore a white one. All three
women had piled their long hair on top of their heads.

Zoe stepped inside, followed by
Travers. He pulled the door closed.

“You’re safe,” Lachesis
said.

“We were worried,” Atropos
said.

“But not that worried,” Clotho
said.

“We did have faith in you,” Lachesis
said.

Zoe held up her hand. She couldn’t
listen to this anymore. “I didn’t get it.”

“Get what, darling?” Atropos asked as
she stepped into the suite’s main room.

“The spinning wheel,” Zoe said. “I
didn’t get it.”

“It’s the heart of Faerie,” Travers
said. “Removing it might be impossible.”

“Nothing’s impossible,” Clotho said,
but Lachesis smiled.

“Did you hear what he said?” she
asked. “It’s the heart.”

Atropos tapped her chin with one
polished fingernail. “Interesting.”

They didn’t seem upset at all. But Zoe
was. She was trembling.

“Don’t you understand?”
she said. “I didn’t get it, and the Faeries plan to use it to
change the power structure in the whole world. Gaylord
said—”

“Where is Gaylord?” Clotho
asked.

“I left him at the Mirage,” Travers
said.

“The Mirage?” Lachesis asked.
“Why?”

Travers shook his head. “It’s a long
story.”

Which Zoe heard only a part of on the
cab ride back. She had been thinking too hard to
concentrate.

“We know about the power structure,”
Atropos said to Zoe. “We know all about the possible changes.
That’s why we sent you in.”

“But I didn’t get it,” Zoe said. “I
left it down there.”

Clotho shrugged. “Ah,
well.”

She didn’t seem upset at
all.

“You need it,” Zoe said. “You said you
need it. Gaylord said the world needs it. We could lose
everything—”

“Calm down,” Lachesis said. “You
should be happy.”

“What?” Zoe looked at all three of
them. They were still smiling. Travers stood beside her. At least
he was as confused as she was. “Why should I be happy?”

“Didn’t your prophecy come true?”
Atropos asked.

Zoe flushed. “Yes, but—”

“No buts,” Clotho said. “People should
be both happy and grateful when they find true love.”

Travers slipped his arm around Zoe
again. She leaned into him. She couldn’t help it.

“But the wheel—”

“Forget the wheel,” Lachesis said.
“You were just to find it. If you couldn’t get it out, we had a
back-up plan.”

“You did?” Travers asked.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Zoe
said.

“It’s not that important,” Atropos
said.

“If the fate of the world rests on it,
it is,” Travers said.

“The fate of
your
world is decided,”
Clotho said. “You’re going to live happily ever after,
right?”

Travers frowned. “If Zoe’ll have
me.”

“Then we’ve done our duty,” Lachesis
said.

Atropos grinned. “Even without
magic.”

“But the wheel,” Zoe said.

“We’ve already put out feelers,”
Clotho said. “We’re going to get Robin Hood to get the
wheel.”

“The
Robin Hood?” Travers asked.

“Why do people ask that question?”
Lachesis said.

“Yes,
the
Robin Hood.” Zoe
sighed. She knew him. He had been to a few Vegas conferences over
the decades. “Are you sure he’s right for the
job?”

“Can’t think of anyone better,”
Atropos said. “Now, go on with your lives and let us worry about
the future.”