Absolutely Captivated

by Grayson, Kristine

  “We get it,” Gaylord said. “You’re not into this love thing. Which is why we warned you.”

  “Actually,” Herschel said, “we warned you because gathering magic isn’t always a good thing. Just because your destiny lurks doesn’t mean that you’ll get it. I mean, each prophecy has a dark side. Right? Ours do, anyway. Things can go good or they can go bad. Same with yours, right?”

  “I didn’t know you had prophecies,” Zoe said with surprise.

  “Um.” Herschel looked at Gaylord, who looked back. They had equal expressions of panic on their handsome faces. “We don’t.”

  “That’s right,” Gaylord said. “We don’t. Of course not. Why would we befriend a mage if we had prophecies?”

  Herschel kicked him under the table. Zoe saw Herschel’s leg move, and heard the thud as his steel-toed boot connected with Gaylord’s knee.

  Zoe pushed her stein into the center of the table, and leaned forward. She felt cold. “You befriended me because of a prophecy?” she asked.

  “No,” they said in unison. Herschel actually shook his head repeatedly, a clear sign that he was lying.

  “Why would we do that?” Gaylord asked.

  “You tell me,” Zoe said.

  They looked at each other again, wide-eyed, guilty looks.

  “You may as well,” Zoe said. “You aren’t doing a good job of covering up. All I have to do is go to one of the seedy casinos on the Boulder Highway and ask around. They’ll tell me who gets prophecies, and then I’ll tell them who spilled the—”

  “All right!” Herschel said holding up his hands as if she were robbing him. “All right.”

  Gaylord watched him in stunned fascination. Or maybe it was fear. Zoe couldn’t really tell, not at this angle and in the dim light.

  “We have prophecies,” Herschel said, “and they’re not individual like yours. They all have to do with power, and right now, you’re the power center, Zo.”

  Whatever she had expected him to say, it wasn’t that. “Me?” she asked, not trying to cover her surprise.

  He nodded. “I mean, we’ve always known, me and Gaylord, that you’d have something to do with the power shift in Faerie, but we didn’t know how, especially after we got to know you—”

  “And like you,” Gaylord added, as if he were afraid she would be mad.

  She wasn’t sure if she was mad or not. She’d always known her friendship with two Faeries was unusual, but she’d prided herself on her open-mindedness. She figured they had prided themselves on theirs as well.

  “—and after we found out that you didn’t ever want to go into Faerie. We just figured, you know, that you’d hold the key to the entire regime change.”

  “Regime change?” Zoe asked.

  Herschel shrugged. “It’s not as bad as it sounds, not really. The Kings’ve been in power for a long time now, and they’re getting real stale. Not to mention power-hungry. So we figured if the power floats around you, then we’re safe near you. If you know what I mean.”

  Zoe didn’t know what he meant. “I thought you said this had to do with my prophecy.”

  “Well, technically, it does and it doesn’t.” Gaylord grabbed her beer and shoved his straw into it. Zoe grimaced. He stirred the beer, ignoring her reaction.

  “Magic gathers whenever a destiny is about to be met,” Herschel said.

  “It doesn’t matter whose destiny.” Gaylord was studying the swirling straw. “It could be yours, it could be Faerie’s, it could be someone else’s.”

  “So you didn’t really want to warn me at all.” Zoe folded her hands together, mostly so that she couldn’t shake these little men like she wanted to. “You came here to find out what I knew.”

  Herschel set his empty beer stein next to Gaylord’s, then moved them to the edge of the table, probably hoping the bar’s lone cocktail waitress would see them and interrupt the conversation.

  “Well, you know,” Herschel said, “we figured if we mentioned the rumor, then you might just enlighten us.”

  “You’ve done that before,” Gaylord said as he kept stirring.

  Zoe grabbed the straw, and pulled it out of her beer. She moved the dripping thing into Gaylord’s stein, and pulled hers back in front of her.

  She didn’t want to drink from it—not anymore, especially not after the straw incident—but she felt like she needed it as her shield again.

  “I’ve told you things I shouldn’t have?” Zoe asked.

  “You know, when you’ve asked us for information,” Herschel said. “We’ve traded.”

  Apparently they traded a little more than she knew. She used to go to them for any information that had to do with Faerie-owned casinos—and there were a lot of them in Vegas, mostly on the outskirts. Ancient, seedy casinos, with long-enchanted customers who sat in front of slot machines and pulled and pulled and pulled until they got carpal tunnel or died.

  “You guys have been using me,” Zoe said.

  “No more than you’ve been using us,” Herschel said.

  “It’s not like that,” Gaylord said, almost at the same time. “We like you, Zo.”

  The thing of it was, she knew Gaylord was telling the truth. For all the times they had traded information, there were other times where they’d simply sat around a non-Faerie-owned bar, like this one, and talked. They liked her stories, and she liked theirs. They had all lived long lives, and they loved to share parts of the past.

  She wasn’t as angry as she should have been. She never fully trusted them anyway, and she doubted they fully trusted her.

  And they had called her here to do her a favor.

  Zoe sighed. “What should I be looking out for?”

  Gaylord and Herschel exchanged glances again. Those looks were beginning to make her nervous.

  “Anything unusual,” Herschel said.

  “More unusual than usual,” Gaylord said.

  “More unusual than usual how?” Zoe asked.

  “Like power stuff or love stuff might be a tip you’re in difficult waters,” Herschel said.

  “Or stuff that isn’t quite what it seems,” Gaylord said.

  “Like you guys.” Zoe couldn’t resist jabbing at them.

  “No!” Herschel said.

  “Yes!” Gaylord said at the same time.

  “Okay, maybe a little like us,” Herschel said. “But not right now. You’ve known us, like, forever.”

  “At least since you’ve moved to Vegas,” Gaylord said.

  “But we’re talking about in the next few days,” Herschel said. “Watch out for strange stuff.”

  “Realize it’s part of a prophecy,” Gaylord said.

  “Whose?” Zoe asked.

  “If we knew, we wouldn’t be so cryptic,” Herschel said. “We’re not privileged, Zo. You know that.”

  Zoe felt her head beginning to spin. She hated dealing with magic. It had been a burden her entire life, and now, it seemed, the burden was going to get worse.

  “Oh, and watch out for the blond guy,” Herschel said.

  “What blond guy?” Zoe asked.

  “The one with the kid,” Gaylord said.

  “I know a lot of blond guys with kids,” Zoe said.

  “The new one,” Herschel said.

  “The new kid?” Zoe asked.

  “The new blond guy. He’ll be tall and—

  “Really good-looking,” Gaylord said with a wink.

  “—and he’s got this really powerful kid who hasn’t come into his magic yet,” Herschel said.

  A shiver ran down Zoe’s back. “Why should I watch out for him?” she asked.

  Herschel and Gaylord exchanged yet another glance. And this one was filled with worry.

  “Because,” Gaylord said, “he’s going to get you to go into Faerie, and you’ll get trapped in the Circle.”

  “The Circle?” Zoe asked.

  Herschel waved his hands, as if to say that an explanation of the Circle wasn’t important.

  “Stay away from the Ci
rcle, Zo,” he said. He was more serious than she had ever seen him. “Everyone who gets trapped by the Circle dies.”

  “In case you’ve forgotten,” Zoe says, “I’m immortal.”

  Gaylord shook his head. “Not in Faerie, you’re not.”

  “Just like we aren’t in Mount Olympics,” Herschel said.

  “Olympus,” Zoe said, absently. Was that what her prophecy had meant? Trapped by narrow walls of a Faerie Circle? For eternity?

  But they had said “died,” not “trapped.”

  “What should I do?” she asked.

  “How should we know?” Herschel asked. “We just came to let you know that the magic had gathered. We did that.”

  He slid out of the booth, tossed a few bills onto the table, and looked at Gaylord.

  “C’mon, Gaylord,” Herschel said. “We’ve done enough.”

  And then he walked out of the bar. No one seemed to see him go—one of the many magicks that the Faeries always used to great advantage.

  Gaylord was trapped in the booth by Zoe. He put a hand on hers. His skin was warm and dry. She wasn’t sure she’d ever touched anyone from Faerie before.

  “Zoe,” he said, “do what you always do. What we’re taught about prophecies is that you can’t fight them. You just have to be yourself. The ending is determined not by the Kings or some divine energy, but by your uniqueness, and how you’ve developed it over time.”

  “Great,” Zoe said. She hadn’t done so very well over her time. If she had, she wouldn’t be living in a seedy town that had more glitz than it should have and more magic per square acre than any other place on the planet.

  Gaylord squeezed her hand. “You’ll do fine,” he said, and vanished.

  She let out a small sigh and leaned back. No one else in the bar saw him disappear—and if they had, they wouldn’t remember it. The Faerie often used mind trickery forbidden to mages.

  She wished she had someone she could turn to. Her mentor had moved on a long time ago. They hadn’t been in touch in more than a hundred years.

  Zoe had very few magical friends. Most of them were scattered across the globe. She supposed she could call or just pop in on them, the way that Gaylord was popping in on someone right now, but she wasn’t sure they knew any more than she did.

  And she knew better than to go to the Fates. Those three women, in charge of prophecy and magical justice, would just talk in circles, never letting her know what to do. They relished their superior place in the scheme of things, and weren’t about to sacrifice it to give someone like her advice.

  She was on her own, the magic was gathering, and she had no idea what she was going to do.

  Two

  At that moment, the blond guy with the powerful kid was in a motel one step below Motel Six in Ashland, Oregon, wondering how his older sister always managed to talk him into something he would never normally do.

  The blond guy’s name was Travers Kinneally. He was a Certified Public Accountant who owned his own firm, handling investments and financial advice for a group of very well-to-do and well-connected people in Los Angeles, all of whom would be quite appalled if they knew he was sprawled on a double bed with his clothes and shoes on, hands behind his head because the two paper-thin pillows the motel provided didn’t give him enough support, staring at a TV that was bolted to the dresser.

  His son, Kyle, was lying on the other bed in the exact same position, except that his shoes were off, and his Superman socks glowed kryptonite green in the half-light.

  Normally, Kyle was not allowed to be up this late, so he was treating the Tonight Show as if it were a filthy movie broadcast on Pay-Per-View. Every time Jay Leno cracked a remotely risqué joke, Kyle looked sideways at his father, either hoping that Travers wouldn’t notice or that he wouldn’t shut the television off.

  Kyle was precocious for an eleven-year-old, but he was also naïve, something Travers wanted to maintain as long as possible. The other children at Kyle’s private school seemed to know everything there was to know about sex and drugs and even rock n’ roll, but Kyle didn’t seem to care.

  He lived for his comic books and his computer and his books, just like Travers’ sister Vivian used to do. She had turned out pretty darned good, except for her strange friends and somewhat mysterious new husband.

  Travers and Kyle had been in Portland attending Vivian’s wedding when this entire odyssey got started. And Travers had been feeling so good, so magnanimous, that he had agreed to Vivian’s outrageous proposition.

  At the time, it had seemed like the brotherly thing to do.

  “Dad,” Kyle whispered, “do you think they can hear us?”

  Travers started. His son was oddly prescient at times. Travers hadn’t really been thinking about the three strange women in the next room, but he was moving there. After all, they were traveling with him and Kyle at the behest of Vivian, who seemed to think that Travers wouldn’t mind some company on the way to Los Angeles.

  “Does it matter, Kyle?” Travers asked. One of the pillows slipped from his grasp, and his head thudded against the headboard—which, for some unknown reason, was made of real, hard and painful wood.

  “Dunno.” Kyle sat up, and wrapped his pillow around his waist. His round glasses slid to the edge of his nose, giving his face an owlish cast. “It’s just that….”

  He shook his head, like he didn’t want to finish the sentence. Kyle often didn’t like to discuss what was on his mind, particularly with his father. He and Travers were about as different as two people could get.

  That was one reason why Travers was sorry to see Vivian stay in Portland. She, at least, could talk to Kyle. Travers usually found himself starting sentences with If you only listened and Maybe if you tried to be like the other kids, sentences his youngest sister, Megan, a child psychologist, said were guaranteed to alienate any child.

  “It’s just that what?” Travers asked.

  “Well, don’t you think they’re a little weird?” Kyle turned to face him. Even though they’d been driving all day, Kyle had somehow managed to get ink smudges on his cheeks. The boy spent most of his time drawing his own comic books, even though Travers wanted him to learn some outdoor activities, maybe even join a league, although what kind of league, Travers didn’t know. Kyle wasn’t the most coordinated kid in the world, and most teams seemed to know that just by looking at him.

  Then Travers realized what his son had said to him. Kyle was calling someone “weird.” Kyle hated that word, having had it thrown at him too many times.

  Travers sat up.

  “I thought you didn’t like to call people weird,” Travers said, and then immediately wished he hadn’t. Megan would have called that one of his manipulative moments.

  Let the boy be himself, Travers, Megan had said to him during the wedding reception. You try so hard to have Kyle be the perfect L.A. kid that you fail to realize how very special he is.

  Travers did realize how special Kyle was. Travers also saw how much pain being special caused his son—through teasing, taunting, and general bullying. Megan may have been quick with the advice, but she wasn’t the one who had to clean Kyle up when he came home with his clothing torn and his nose bloodied.

  Travers wanted his son to have a normal childhood, just not the normal childhood of a nerd.

  Now Kyle shrugged. He shoved his glasses up his nose in a movement reminiscent of Vivian.

  “Dunno,” he mumbled. “Just kinda seemed like the right word.”

  Then he lay back down, put his hands behind his head, and stared at Jay Leno, who was doing his usual Jay-walking segment at Universal City. Travers had always thought Kyle would find this part of the Tonight Show appalling and funny at the same time, but the boy wasn’t laughing. He was watching, but he clearly wasn’t paying attention.

  Travers suppressed a sigh. He had been a single father since Kyle was six months old, when Kyle’s nineteen-year-old mother had fled the tiny apartment filled with dirty diapers, squalling baby, and s
leepless husband.

  I’m too young for this, Trav, Cheryl had said just before she left. I need to live a little before I settle down.

  Travers hadn’t even pretended to understand. He was the same age. They had been high school sweethearts, and they had always talked about spending the rest of their lives together, having a passel of kids, and living the American Dream.

  Apparently, for Cheryl, the American Dream didn’t include a happy baby who believed that nighttime was for playing, an apartment without cable television, and a bathroom that constantly looked like it was the center of a war zone. Not to mention a skinny husband who couldn’t seem to get a better job than bag boy at the nearby grocery store.

  There wasn’t a lot of Cheryl in Kyle. There wasn’t a lot of Travers either, except in the looks department. Kyle was just as thin and gawky as Travers had been at eleven.

  Only Travers had turned his attention to sports, become not just the best player on the basketball team, but the resident statistician for all the sports at both his junior high school and his high school. Travers had always loved numbers, and they had always loved him.

  Numbers, he liked to say, were the only constant in his life.

  Which wasn’t exactly true. He had his family—his parents and his two sisters and Kyle—and he loved all of them more than anything else.

  This time, he sighed and got up, crossing the narrow space between the two beds, and sitting down next to Kyle.

  “How come you think those women are weird?” Travers asked quietly.

  Kyle shrugged and continued to stare at the TV. Travers could see the colors on the screen—the fleshy tones of Leno’s skin, the green neon that seemed to dominate Universal City, the blue of the jeans everyone wore—reflected in Kyle’s glasses.

  Travers grabbed the remote—or tried to. It was bolted to the nightstand. Why would anyone bolt a remote to a nightstand? Or, more importantly, why would anyone think an old hotel remote was worth stealing?

  He didn’t have time to ponder those questions. Instead, he leaned toward the nightstand, looked at the multi-colored buttons, and pushed the red one.

  The television winked off.

  “Hey!” Kyle said. “I was watching that.”