Absolutely Captivated (9 page)

“You must stay, Travers,” said
Clotho.

“This concerns you, young man,” said
Lachesis.

“After all, you’re years behind in
your studies,” said Atropos in a voice that sounded so much like
his mother’s that Travers actually let go of the doorknob before he
realized what he had done.

“I have no studies,” Travers said,
“and all I’m behind in is a few days’ work. Kyle and I have to find
a hotel room, so we’ll leave you to your business. It’s been a
pleasure, ladies.”

“Stop him!” Clotho said to
Zoe.

“Use a spell, something,” Lachesis
said.

“He cannot leave this room!” Atropos
said.

Zoe’s face had gone ashen. In fact, it
changed color the moment Lachesis said the word “spell.”

Zoe looked from him to the women and
back to him again. “Tell me what’s going on here,” she said to him,
“and this time, don’t hold anything back.”

Zoe had no idea why she
had commanded Travers Kinneally to tell her what was going on.
After all, he seemed almost as confused as she felt. He looked from
his son (son! Travers must have been a child himself when he
fathered that boy) to the possible Fates and, when it was clear
none of them were going to say anything, he looked at
Zoe.

And shrugged.

The movement was elegant, boyish, and
somehow charming. She had to resist the urge to smile.

“All I can do is tell you why I’m
here,” he said.

“Shoot.” She crossed her arms and
leaned back, her chair squeaking as she did so.

But the blond spoke first. “I do
believe it would be better if we told you—”

“Shh!” the redhead said.

“Have you, of all people, forgotten
the main objective?” the brunette asked.

The blond put a hand over her mouth.
“The situation is getting serious. We are losing touch.”

“Shh!” the redhead said
again.

“Let the boy answer her,” the brunette
said.

“Me?” Kyle squeaked.

“No, child,” the blond said. “The
other boy.”

“Your father,” the redhead
said.

“After all,” the brunette said without
a trace of sarcasm, “he’s the one who wants to abandon
us.”

“I do not!” Travers said,
looking surprised. Then he shrugged again, and Zoe found that she
liked that boyish mannerism. “I mean, I do want to leave, but
you’re adults. You’re not my responsibility. Kyle is, and we have
to get home.”

Zoe frowned. She looked from the man
to the boy. Kyle’s cheeks had reddened, and it seemed like he was
angry.

“You promised, Dad,” Kyle
said

“I promised you I would bring them
here,” Travers said. “I’ve done that.”

“But you don’t know if she’s the right
Zoe Sinclair!” Kyle said.

“What’s this about the right Zoe
Sinclair?” Zoe asked.

“She is,” said the blond.

Zoe shook her head. “Someone please
tell me what’s going on.”

And again, she looked at
Travers.

He held out his hands in a
helpless, who-knows gesture. “My sister, at her wedding, asked me
to drive these three women down to Los Angeles. I did that. Then it
turns out that they want to find a woman who used to work there
named Zoe Sinclair. My kindhearted son—”

Kyle’s flush grew even
deeper.

“—
begged me to help them
find this woman, saying that these three ladies shouldn’t be on
their own. Kyle’s pretty astute for a kid his age, so I
agreed.”

Zoe folded her hands on the desktop,
not wanting Travers to see how unnerved she was. These women had to
have something to do with the Fates. This was some sort of
complicated scam. Zoe wondered if the real Fates knew about
it—non-magical women doing a fairly excellent impersonation of the
most powerful beings in mage history (excepting the Powers that Be,
of course).

Travers sighed and shook his head.
“Long story short, there hasn’t been a detective named Zoe Sinclair
in Los Angeles since—”

“The 1950s,” Zoe said.
“You can stop pretending you don’t understand this now. You found
me. What do you all want?”

Her voice was harsher than
she had intended but she was getting annoyed. She was finally able
to see past Travers’ beauty, which had stunned her for a while. She
hadn’t thought clearly.

If she had, she would have realized
that the magical always knew other mages. And they knew about long
life spans and the way that the magical aged slowly.

So Travers, for all his protestations,
knew that she was who she said she was. And the women, who should
have been magical and were not, did not, apparently, know that Zoe
could suss out their lack of magical abilities.

The only real mystery here was Kyle.
The kid seemed sincere. But Zoe had seen a lot of Vegas scams built
on children. Children could be the absolute best at sincerity,
partly because they didn’t have to try as hard.

“Excuse me?” Travers said. He looked
like she had thrown cold water on him. “You can’t be that Zoe
Sinclair.”

“And why not?” Zoe asked.

“Because you’re—what? Thirty? And to
be that woman, you’d have to be eighty, like I said.”

“And you can stop playing
dumb, Mr. Kinneally,” Zoe said. “I’m not some wilting mortal woman
who is unwilling to admit her piddly age. I’m going to be
one-hundred-and-seventy-four in August, more than old enough to be
your Miss Sinclair from Los Angeles and from Vegas fifty years ago.
I’m not a grandmother, I never will be, and I’m not about to start
now.”

He stared at her. She could have sworn
that the shock he was pretending to have was real. It felt real. It
resounded through her as if she were the one who was
shocked.

“I’m not a fool, Ms. Sinclair,” he
said.

“Good,” she snapped. “Then let’s get
down to business.”

“I mean,” he said, as if
she hadn’t spoken, “no one lives one-hundred-and-seventy-four
years. I don’t know what you’re trying to pull, but this isn’t
working.”

“Me?” Zoe’s voice rose. “You’re the
one who comes marching in here, decides that I can’t be who I say I
am, pretends not to have magic when it’s clear you do, tries to
pass off three non-magical women as the Fates, and somehow managed
to rope your poor son into all of this.”

“What?” Travers pushed off the door.
His blue eyes seemed even brighter than they had a minute before.
“I’m not conducting a scam.”

Zoe silently cursed herself for using
the word “Fate” before anyone else had, but she was committed
now.

“You clearly are. Anyone with a hint
of magic could tell that you and your boy are about as magical as
they come. That kid’s going to be something, with the abilities he
already has. I sure hope his training is better than yours, because
it’s clear that you’re not smart enough to scam anyone. First of
all, you have to know that—”

“Wait a minute.” Travers’ voice got
lower when he was angry. And softer. Which made it seem more
menacing, somehow, than a yell. “I am not involving my son in
anything illegal.”

“Not by human laws, no,” Zoe said,
“although I haven’t heard the pitch yet. Is it to steal
something?”

All three women nodded their
heads.

“Well, then, I’m not your man,
metaphorically speaking,” Zoe said. “Because I don’t break
laws—mortal or mage. It’s just not good for me, my reputation, or
my business.”

“We haven’t asked you to break any
laws,” Travers said.

“Um, Dad,” Kyle said, so softly that
he might have hoped Zoe couldn’t hear him. “The Fates just
did.”

“The Fates.” Travers put his hands on
his hips. “I believe that they’re the Fates as much as I believe
that you, Ms. Sinclair, are one-hundred-and-seventy-four years old.
I have had enough of this craziness. Kyle, we’re
leaving.”

“No.” The boy flopped onto Zoe’s
couch. A cloud of dust rose off the cushions, and Zoe almost smiled
despite her annoyance. Her housekeeping skills did leave something
to be desired. “We’re not leaving until someone promises to take
care of the Fates.”

Now the boy was calling them the
Fates, but Zoe didn’t know if that was because she had done so
first. She silently cursed herself again for making that mistake,
and made a mental promise that she would never again berate clients
who made the same one. It was startlingly easy to fall into that
kind of trap.

“Travers,” said the redhead. “You
really must stay.”

“We will need you on this mission,”
said the brunette.

“Mission?” Now his voice went up. And
it moved from baritone to Irish tenor. Which Zoe still found
attractive, even though she was annoyed. And the fact that she
found him attractive when she was annoyed annoyed her even
further.

“Look, ladies,” he said, “I’ve done
all I’m going to do. Get Miss Sinclair to baby-sit you for a few
days. Maybe she can find someone new to pass you off on. I’m outta
here.”

He took steps toward the couch,
looking forever like an angry father about to grab his son and take
him out of a dangerous place. Kyle ran to Zoe and hid behind her
chair.

“You’ve got to hear this
out,” Kyle said, all in a rush. “Because we’re not scamming you and
no one’s lying to you and my dad really is clueless—he has been
since I was a baby. He always says it’s coincidence that I know
stuff, not that I’m psychic, even though my Aunt Viv is psychic and
my new Uncle Dexter used to be Superman.”

That last caught Zoe by surprise.
“Dexter?” She turned toward the boy, and saw him only partially out
of her left eye. He had ducked behind the chair, and was holding
its back with his hands, as if it were a shield that he could move
to block his father.

“We’re leaving, Kyle,” Travers said.
“Enough games.”

“Superman?” Zoe asked, a memory
playing in her mind. Something about Canada and—

“Henri Barou,” the blond said. “In the
1930s, he went afoul with some children, let them see him fly, and
they wrote a comic book? Do you recall the scandal?”

Zoe looked at the blonde. Zoe did
recall the scandal. She had met Henri Barou who was calling himself
Dexter Grant. He wanted to know if she would help him with a case.
He didn’t dare use his magic, since the Fates had forbidden it, but
he knew of a purebred puppy mill in which the animals were being
mistreated. He just didn’t know what to do about it. His old method
would have been to fly in and rescue the animals, but he couldn’t
anymore. The Fates had forbidden his interference in mortal
affairs. So he had come to Zoe, asking for help.

She had taken photographs, documented
proof of the abuse, and had reported the mill’s owners to the
state. The state shut the mill down, and Zoe had used her own magic
to heal a lot of the injured and sick animals, just so that they
could be adopted by caring people.

Travers was watching her. “You believe
this Superman crap?”

“Honest,” Kyle said. “My dad doesn’t
know about any of it. I wish you could feel what I
know….”

His voice was barely above a whisper,
and this time, Zoe knew that Travers couldn’t hear his
son.

Zoe raised a hand and sealed her door
shut. Then she boosted the air-conditioning because the room had
gotten stiflingly warm.

“Mr. Kinneally,” she said,
“you have been out-voted by your son and his friends. You’re
staying until I understand exactly what’s going on
here.”

“Sorry,” Travers said. “Kyle and I are
going. And if Kyle doesn’t want to leave, then I guess he can stay
here without me.”

The parental bluff. Only
Travers Kinneally gave it enough of an edge to make it seem real.
He walked to the door and turned the knob. But of course the door
didn’t move. The knob didn’t even make its normal clicking
sound.

“I wasn’t kidding,” Zoe said. “You’re
staying.”

“Open this door.” He grabbed the door
knob with both hands and pulled. The muscles in his well-shaped
arms strained, but the door didn’t budge.

“Dad,” Kyle said.

“Open it!” Travers braced
a foot against the doorjamb and pulled. Still nothing
happened.

Zoe raised her eyebrows and leaned
back in her chair. This man was putting on an excellent
performance.

“Travers,” said the redhead with a bit
of a sigh, “the door won’t open.”

“Open the door, dammit, or
I will come over to your desk, find the remote locking mechanism,
and smash it.” As he said that last, he turned toward Zoe. His
hands were still on the knob, one foot still rested against the
doorjamb, and Zoe was tempted—ever so tempted—to release the
binding spell she had put on the door.

Then Travers would have tumbled
backward and maybe even fallen into the so-called Fates. But then,
of course, he’d leave, and Zoe wouldn’t find out exactly what was
going on.