Totally Spellbound (37 page)

“As the Interim Fates have shown,”
Lachesis said.

“Enough!” Zoe snapped. “You were
supposed to be quiet.”

She put her hands to her head and
looked at that mess still surrounding the casino. Kyle closed his
eyes, feeling for Aunt Meg with his brain, but he couldn’t find
her.

That was okay. Everybody
said that might happen. This was a scary thing, and the Faerie
casino might make a sending inside impossible. Besides, he might
call too much attention to her if he wasn’t careful.

His eyes filled with tears.

“We give it just a few more minutes,”
Zoe said. “If you get another feeling or if you hear from her, you
tell me. Otherwise, we go after her at my mark. Okay?”

He blinked his eyes open. The tears
stuck to his lashes. He felt like a dork, a really scared
dork.

“Okay,” he said.

“Do you think that’s too much?” Zoe
asked.

“You’re asking the child again,”
Atropos said.

“He has to tell me if he has another
sense of Megan,” Zoe said.

Kyle shook his head. He had no sense
of her at all, and that really bugged him.

It was almost like she was
gone.

They weren’t supposed to be
here.

The all-powerful Faerie Kings should
have been heading toward that casino on Boulder Highway, if they
were even in Vegas, off to see the empath, like the rest of their
tribe.

Instead, they were sitting on thrones,
looking every bit as regal as kings should.

And those thrones ringed the spinning
wheel. There was no way Rob could just lift it loose, and these
guys out-magicked him a thousand to one.

There was no way he and John and
Travers could take on the Faerie Kings and win.

But this was like the old days. They
didn’t have to take on the kings and win.

They just had to divert the kings,
steal their attention for a moment, so that someone could grab that
wheel.

“You know me,” Rob said. He had to
come up with a plan and he had to do it fast.

The third Faerie King smiled at him.
“We’ve been waiting for you, Sir Robin of Hood. We’ve heard that
you are our destiny.”

Great. He didn’t want to hear his
prophecy, but he got to hear theirs.

“So we’ve been following your career,”
said the first Faerie King. “Quite stellar.”

“Thanks,” Rob said. “I
think.”

Travers was shooting him a panicked
look. Rob couldn’t do much with Travers, but he and John had been
fighting side by side for centuries.

Rob flashed John a look. John raised
his weird eyebrows—code for whatever you want to do,
boss.

“How
are
the Fates, anyway?”
the second Faerie King asked.

“Just fine,” Rob said, wondering why
they asked.

“Because they’re supposed to be here
too,” said the third Faerie King.

“Really?” Rob asked, moving forward
just a little. “Says who?”

“We don’t have an oracle,” the first
Faerie King said.

“But we do have access to
this lovely wheel,” the second Faerie King said—and he spun it as
he said that, sending lights everywhere in the Faerie
circle.

Which was just the diversion that Rob
wanted. He conjured three swords, one for him, one for John, and
one for Travers, and tossed the other two men theirs.

Then he leapt, Errol Flynn style, onto
the platform holding the wheel, grabbed the first Faerie King, and
yanked him out of the throne, placing the sword at his
neck.

He doubted he could kill a
Faerie, but he sure as heck was going to try.

To Megan’s surprise, she wasn’t
frightened of the most powerful man in the magical world. He had
her in some kind of spell and had moved her from the casino (for
which she felt a little too much relief, considering how much
danger it probably put Rob in) to somewhere else.

It felt like they were suspended in
time. And then they landed. They didn’t end up in some giant Greek
coliseum or even in the smelly library, but in her office. It was
after hours, and the place had a dry, unused smell, even though
she’d only been gone for a day or two.

Lights were on that should have been
off, and the door to her therapy room was open. Zeus strode across
the carpeted floor like he owned the place.

She certainly didn’t want him in that
room—it was a safe room, a place where her clients felt comfortable
to say anything they wanted, and even though she was closing it
down, she didn’t want him violating it.

“Daddy, jeez!”

“Oh,
man
!”

“This just blows.”

Megan felt stunned. She recognized
those voices. The Interim Fates. Why were they here and not in
their library, attempting to govern the world?

She peered in the doorway.
There they were, all three girls, sitting on her extra-long couch.
Brittany clutched a Raggedy Anne doll that Megan used for the
younger patients. Crystal was examining a naked Barbie. And Tiffany
had both hands clenched into fists. She was glaring—at
Megan.

“It’s about time,” Brittany
said.

“We’ve been waiting,
like, for
ever
,”
Crystal said.

“You promised you
could help us,” Tiffany snapped, “and then you bring
him.
”

Well, this situation was out of
control. These girls were furious and terrified, and Zeus wasn’t
exactly calm. He stood just inside the door, his hands at his
sides, watching his daughters as if he’d never seen them
before.

Megan stepped inside the room. They
all had more magic than she did—that was the risk—but this was her
place, the place where she confronted people who always had more
something than she did—whether it was real power or real money or
real chutzpah.

Actually, she usually had the most of
that, and she was going to use it now.

“I didn’t bring him,” Megan said. “He
brought me.”

“Grrrr-ate,” Brittany said.

“You’re right,” Crystal said to
Tiffany. “This blows.”

“You were supposed to be here,”
Tiffany said, ignoring the others.

“Well, no,” Megan said.
“I’m supposed to be baby-sitting my nephew.”

“In a casino?” Even Zeus sounded
shocked, although why should he? This was a man who had more love
affairs than anyone else in any mythology, a man who carelessly
abandoned children, after, of course, fathering more of them than
any other so-called god she could think of. Why would he care if a
child was in a casino?

She didn’t answer him. She wasn’t
going to let him distract her from the girls, who had come to her
for help.

(Not that she was really in a position
to give it, given that she had just been kidnapped herself. But no
matter, Zeus had brought her here for a reason, and she would
figure out what that reason was.)

“I was in Las Vegas,” Megan said to
the girls.

“Isn’t this Las Vegas?” Brittany
said.

“It’s Las something-or-other,” Crystal
said.

“It’s Los Angeles,” Megan said
gently.

“You guys screwed up again!” Tiffany
snapped. “You said you could handle this one. You said it was a
simple spell. I trusted you.”

The infighting was coming from the
fear and the stress. The levels in the room had risen to
unbearable. Megan walked in farther and went to her chair. She
realized now that she had protected it, made it slightly walled so
that she could feel emotions when she sat in it but they didn’t
become part of her.

Sitting in the chair felt like coming
home.

“What spell did you cast?” she asked
the first two Interim Fates gently.

“I did it.” Brittany’s voice was
filled with tears.

“She said to come to you so you could
help us,” Crystal said.

And this was where Megan helped
people. So that made sense. These poor girls. They were so out of
their element.

“And it didn’t work!” Tiffany
snapped.

“Actually, it did,” Megan said,
keeping her voice level. It was Zeus that made her nervous, still
standing by the door. “I’m here now.”

“And you’re going to help me,” Zeus
said. “These girls have to get back to work. It took me forever to
find them.”

Megan raised her head and looked at
him. She couldn’t think of him as the head of the Powers That Be.
She couldn’t think of him as the man with the power to destroy true
love forever.

She had to think of him as an abusive,
out-of-control father, who had no idea what he was doing to his
daughters.

“Thank you for bringing me to them,”
she said. “You can wait outside.”

Zeus drew himself to his full
height—or maybe more than his full height—and yelled, “I DO NOT
WAIT OUTSIDE. WE SHALL RESOLVE THIS HERE.”

That wasn’t really a yell.
It was more like a decree from on high. The girls cowered on the
couch. But Megan didn’t move. She could feel the impotent anger
behind Zeus’ shout.

“‘
We’ won’t do anything if
you raise your voice at me again. Either speak to me civilly,”
Megan said, “or leave.”

The girls gaped at her. Zeus stared at
her, clearly stunned.

“I could blind you,” he said in a
civil tone.

“Yet, if you do, I’ll
continue right along, doing what I do.” Megan hoped her own bravado
didn’t show. She told herself that her calm counselor demeanor had
gotten her through worse, although she wasn’t sure if that was
true.

“Then I’ll turn you into a wolf,” he
said.

Megan rolled her eyes. “Are you so old
and out of ideas that you’re repeating yourself? First you act as
if I’m Lycurgus, and then you treat me like Lycaon. For the record,
I would never serve you human flesh for dinner.”

The girls’ eyes were wide. Zeus’ were
wider.

Megan smiled serenely. “I had a
classical education. If you want to threaten me, come up with
something new.”

Zeus opened his mouth, but nothing
came out.

She had unnerved him after
all.

“All right then,” she said. “You
brought me here. You must know that this situation is out of
control, and that I can help you.”

“I want you to take back everything
you said to my girls.” Finally Zeus found his voice.

“And lie to them? I would never do
that. Nor would I manipulate them or use them to my own ends. Like
you have. Which, I must say, is disgraceful in a
father.”

The girls ducked. Zeus’ cheeks
reddened, and Megan did wonder if she was going to end up as a
statue or a bear or pushing a rock uphill for all of
eternity.

But he didn’t do anything — at least
not yet.

“Here are my rules,” Megan
said. “I assume you want this dispute with your daughters
settled—”

“They ran away,” he said, sounding
like a child.

“We escaped,” Brittany
said.

“We’re no good at Fating,” Crystal
said.

“We’re never going back,” Tiffany
said.

“—
and,” Megan said to Zeus
as if she hadn’t been interrupted, “and I will help you resolve
this if and only if you do not interrupt me again, yell at me
again, or threaten me again. You will take the spell off your
daughters so that they can speak like individuals—”

“If I do that, they won’t be Interim
Fates,” Zeus said.

“That’s an interruption,” Megan said.
“It’s your last warning.”

“Or what, puny Empath?”

“Or I will throw you out of here,”
Megan said, not sure how she’d accomplish that. “And you’ll lose
any chance you might have to work with your daughters.”

He closed his mouth. He glared.
Lightning bolts actually appeared in his eyes, but didn’t shoot out
of them (even though the girls did duck again).

Then the bolts faded, and he nodded,
once, as if it hurt.

Megan took a deep
breath. “You will take the spell off your daughters, who will then
be able to speak like normal people. Each girl will get the floor
to express her grievances. No one may interrupt her. You
must
listen, no
eye-rolling, no faces, and no lightning bolts. Can you follow these
rules?”

Zeus’ lower lip came out. He looked
petulant. “I guess.”

“Yes or no,” Megan said. “You cannot
act like a child here, I won’t allow it. You’re an adult, and have
been—well, a lot longer than the rest of us here. You will act like
it. Can you follow these rules?”

Zeus’ lip went back in. His eyes
narrowed. “Yeah.”