“Which, of course,” Clotho said.
“We realized in hindsight.” Lachesis finished.
Zoe sighed, and finally turned to him. Her gaze met his. Her eyes caught him again—that brown mixed with the gold flecks. At the outside corner of her eyes, her lashes curled, giving her a naturally festive look.
His flush deepened. “I don’t get it,” he said, even though he did. He felt a whoosh, like a breath leaving him, each time he imagined more money. He wondered what it would be like to imagine a billion fives—if that whoosh would be even worse—and then he felt it, just the same as before.
For a half second, he closed his eyes, not wanting to see.
“That’s impressive,” Zoe said. “But I was happy with the first pile.”
Travers opened his eyes. The room was filled with cash. Everywhere. Even the Fates were covered with money, as if someone had thrown a ticker-tape parade with five-dollar bills.
“Dad?” Kyle whispered.
“Okay,” Travers said, happy that his voice was level. “I’m freaking out. Can we stop this?”
“You’re the only one doing anything,” Atropos said.
“Our magic is long gone,” Clotho said.
“And young Kyle here hasn’t come into his,” Lachesis said.
“Except for his psychic abilities.” Zoe’s timing put her in the middle of the Fates’ usual one-two-three routine. Atropos looked at her in amazement.
Zoe shrugged. “What were you doing, pretending to be a giant slot payout?”
Travers shook his head. He felt slightly dizzy. The room had the smell of cash, that sharpish Magic Marker scent, mixed with the odor of old paper, and a faint hint of sweat.
“How do I make it go away?” he asked.
“Zoe would like it as a fee,” Atropos said.
Travers shook his head. He had no idea where the money came from.
“If I wanted magically generated cash, I could do it myself. Besides, I haven’t agreed to take your case yet.” Zoe pushed some of the money aside, like a swimmer trying to brush aside water in a pool. “Can you move your newfound wealth to your SUV or maybe your hotel room? I need to set the dog down and get to my desk.”
Travers started, and the very first thing that came to mind came out of his mouth. “How did you know I have an SUV?”
“Oh, please,” Zoe said. “Look at yourself. I didn’t even have to peek through the window to double-check the assumption.”
Travers opened his hands in confusion.
“You have some kind of professional job, corporate maybe, or working near corporations. Very stuffy. Very Keeping-Up-with-the-Joneses—whom I’ve met, by the way, the original ones? And they’re really not worth keeping up with at all. When was the last time you had fun?”
Travers frowned. His sister’s wedding had been fun. Kinda. He hadn’t danced, even though Kyle urged him to, and he hadn’t had more to drink than soda, but he had a good time.
“I bet you were always like this. Very buttoned up. Even when you were in your jock phase. What were you, anyway? Baseball? Basketball—maybe second string college?”
“No,” Travers said, beginning to feel angry. Who was she to judge him? “I never went to college.”
Zoe raised her eyebrows. Kyle opened his mouth, then closed it again.
“I went to night school for a few years before I got enough credits to get into a real school. And that took a lot of juggling for a single father.” His words had bite to them, but he wasn’t going to say what he was thinking.
He hadn’t had fun—not the kind she was talking about—because he’d had responsibilities from a young age. She looked like a woman who had never had responsibilities.
At that moment, the dog whined. Zoe absently petted him, her long fingers toying with his ears. Travers had never envied a dog before.
“Sorry,” she said, but the word was brusque and didn’t sound sorry at all. “Now, will you get back to my original question and clear out the office?”
Travers looked at the Fates with great concern. “Do I just say—?”
“Wait!” Clotho said, holding up her hand.
“Don’t think!” Lachesis said, holding up her hand as well.
“You have to be very careful with this one,” Atropos said, amazingly not imitating the posture of the other two women. “It’s a delicate spell.”
“What is?” Zoe asked.
“He’s a baby wizard,” Clotho said.
“He’s at least thirty,” Zoe said. “He’s been doing it for a while, protestations to the contrary.”
“No,” Travers said, trying hard to understand what “don’t think” meant and how anyone could pull that off. “I haven’t been doing anything.”
“Except winning the lottery,” Kyle muttered. “and having the best record with the IRS of any CPA in California history. You know what people say about my dad?”
“Kyle!” Travers breathed.
Zoe got that curious half-smile that made her seem even more attractive. “What do they say about your dad?”
“That if you want to do well with money, he’s the go-to guy.” Kyle spoke with obvious pride.
Travers felt his cheeks heat even more. He had always hated that recommendation. It made him sound sleazy, even though he wasn’t. Could he be blamed for having a talent for picking successful clients? Not that they were all successful when they came to him, but within a year, he got their numbers to improve—if, of course, the client listened to him. What was wrong with that?
“Really?” Zoe asked and looked at the Fates, as if they knew something he didn’t.
(Well, of course they knew something he didn’t. They seemed to know a lot that he didn’t, but those things weren’t really things he wanted to know. At least, he thought he didn’t want to know them.)
Then Travers shook his head, trying to keep the parenthetical thoughts to a minimum. He needed to pay attention, not get sidetracked by the nitpickiness of his own mind.
“This man has a limited magic, dealing only with numbers?” Zoe was asking. “Is that possible?”
“Of course it’s possible,” Lachesis said. “You’re seeing it in front of you.”
“And, to be honest,” Atropos added, “he’s lucky his magic is limited.”
Clotho nodded, her fingers on the bridge of her nose as if she were getting a headache. “We had one case, just a few years ago—”
“Or maybe a few decades,” Lachesis said.
“We really do have trouble with time,” Atropos said, as if no one else had noticed.
“Anyway,” Clotho said, “there was a young woman—”
“Well, she wasn’t that young,” Lachesis said.
“She was a thousand if she was a day,” Atropos said.
“A thousand!” Kyle said, only because he managed to get the words out before Travers. Travers felt the same shock that he heard in his son’s tones. “Magic people live to be a thousand?”
“Several thousand,” Clotho said.
Travers felt as if he had been hit in the stomach. He had magic and he would live to be several thousand years old? He let out a small breath. If this was Candid Camera, he wanted Alan Funt or Alan Funt, Jr., or whoever was in charge of the tricks these days to appear mighty soon, because Travers wasn’t sure he could take much more.
“Is this rambling tale really necessary?” Zoe asked, joggling the dog just a little. “I really want to sit down.”
“Anyway,” Lachesis said, putting emphasis on the word, probably to discourage more interruptions, “this girl—”
“Woman,” Atropos corrected. “Remember your political correctness lessons.”
“Oh, geez,” Zoe said and rolled her eyes.
“This woman,” Clotho said, as if she had been the one to make the mistake, “her name was Emma Lost, and she had powerful magic.”
“Frighteningly powerful magic,” Lachesis said.
“And no training at all,” Atropos said, “because everyone
believed she was only thirty when she’d been—”
“Get to the point,” Zoe said, only because she, too, was quicker than Travers.
“Well,” Clotho said, managing to sound offended, “Emma’s magic was so powerful and out of control that she was turning cats into lions—”
“In nice suburban neighborhoods where apparently the changes didn’t go over well,” Lachesis added.
“—raining furniture on unsuspecting secretaries,” Atropos said.
“Nearly killing one,” Clotho added.
“—and exasperating college professors,” Lachesis said.
“Which, by far, caused the most trouble,” Atropos said.
“And this is relevant how?” Travers asked. Some fives fell from the ceiling, but he couldn’t tell if they remained from his last whoosh or if they were from some new random thought he hadn’t acknowledged.
“Her magic was out of control,” Clotho said.
“And it was very, very powerful,” Lachesis said.
“Making her quite dangerous,” Atropos said.
“Fortunately,” Clotho said, “you don’t have to worry about that.”
“What?” Travers asked, wishing these women didn’t confuse him so. “I don’t have to worry about what? The dangerous part or the out-of-control magic part?”
“The dangerous part, Dad,” Kyle said. He, apparently, was having no trouble following the Fates’ twisted syntax. “You don’t have enough power. They were saying you were lucky that you didn’t.”
“Oh,” Travers said, and sank into a nearby chair. Money crunched beneath his weight. “Nice to know there’s no worries.”
“We didn’t say there were no worries,” Lachesis said.
“After all, now that you’ve discovered the talent, it will manifest even more,” Atropos said.
Travers frowned. “So what do I do?”
“You get trained immediately, of course,” Clotho said.
“After you get rid of this money in my office.” Zoe pushed at it again. “Or I will.”
“Perhaps you should, dear,” Lachesis said. “I’m afraid if he does it, all the money in the vicinity will vanish.”
“Good point.” Zoe leaned over the pile of money and shoved the dog into Travers arms.
The dog reeked. It had some white, flaky garbage on its back, and part of a banana peel between its toes. A Snickers wrapper stuck to the pad of one foot, and its tail was slightly wet—giving off that pee odor Travers had noticed first.
“Thanks,” he muttered. The dog licked his face, adding the spicy scent of Italian sausage to the other odors.
But Zoe didn’t notice. She snapped her fingers, and the money piles all disappeared, down to the last five-dollar bill.
Travers stood up and looked at the chair. No money on the seat cushion. No money on his backside, either, so far as he could tell.
“Wow,” Kyle breathed. “How did you do that?”
“You’ll learn it eventually,” Zoe said. “Explaining it now will simply confuse you.”
“How about explaining it to me?” Travers asked.
Zoe gave him a sideways look. She studied him for a moment, making his cheeks grow even warmer. He hated blushing like a child. He felt naked before her, and not in a good way. At least, not in the way he would have liked.
Then he felt his neck and chest flush as well. The heat was overwhelming.
“You can’t read my thoughts, can you?” he asked, hoping that none of them could. What if the Fates could? Did they know how he had felt about them on the entire trip? How embarrassing.
Zoe grinned. “Why? Was that blush for me?”
The blush went even deeper. His entire body felt like one giant heat rash.
“No,” he lied.
“They can’t read you, Dad.” Kyle was still sitting on the floor, only now, instead of sifting through money, he was leaning against the desk. “Only I can do that, and it’s because you’re broadcasting. And really, I don’t need to have thoughts like that in my head. Sandra Bullock was bad enough, but—”
“Kyle,” Travers cautioned.
Zoe laughed. “I know how men think, Mr. Kinneally. That was an education I got a long, long time ago.”
“I wasn’t, really,” he lied. “I was just—”
“Worrying about your magic, right?” Zoe walked behind her desk without grabbing the dog. The poor thing just lay in Travers arms as if it were the most tired dog in the universe.
“Right,” Travers lied. Or maybe that wasn’t a lie. He was worried about this so-called magic of his—
“Stop it, Dad,” Kyle said. “It’s not ‘so-called.’ It exists. Or do we have to do more experiments to prove it to you?”
“No,” Travers said a bit too quickly. “No more experiments.”
“Good,” Zoe said, “because I now have several problems to deal with.”
She leaned her chair back and put her high heels on her desk.
“Like the dog?” Travers asked. “He needs a bath.”
“No kidding,” Zoe said.
The dog whined softly.
“Maybe a magical bath?” Travers asked.
The Fates frowned.
“Technically,” Zoe said, “and you’ll learn this as you learn the rules, we’re not supposed to use magic for simple tasks unless the situation demands it.”
“My nose demands it,” Travers said.
The dog whined again.
“You kinda get used to it.” Zoe put her hands behind her head. “As I was saying, I have several problems now. I have the dog, whose name is Bartholomew, by the way, even though he wants it changed.”
The dog yipped and his tail thumped. Travers made the mistake of looking at the dog’s face, and he saw eagerness and agreement, and way too much intelligence for a lesser mammal.
Travers made himself look away.
“Then,” Zoe said, “I have the rather horrible discovery that children are running the legal and judicial branch of our government—”
“Oh, you met them,” Atropos said.
“I met them,” Zoe said, “and they are absolutely terrifying. How could you leave them alone like that? They have no idea what they’re doing.”
“It’s not our fault,” Clotho said. “We were forced out. Term limits, remember?”
The dog squirmed again. Travers wondered if the pee smell was growing stronger. “You need to get down, little guy?”
To Travers’ great consternation, the dog nodded.
Travers set him down a bit too quickly.
“Oh, yes, term limits,” Zoe said. “You started the conversation that way several days ago.”
“Was it days?” Atropos asked. “I would have thought it’s only been hours—”
“But that does explain why we’re so hungry,” Clotho said.
“She’s exaggerating,” Travers snapped.
“About what?” Lachesis asked.
“About the time,” Kyle said. “It only feels like days.”
Zoe grinned at him. Travers’ breath still left his body when she grinned, even when she grinned at someone else.
“Thank you,” Zoe said. “And now, after seeing them, and realizing that this conflict in government could become permanent, I have the unfortunate feeling I need to ask you ladies something.”
“What?” The Fates asked in unison.
“Before you do,” Travers said, “do you mind if Kyle and I leave? After all, we’ve done our part—”
“No, you have not,” Atropos said. “You have to stay.”
“Your part is just beginning,” Clotho said.
Travers’ heart was pounding.
“Besides,” Atropos said, “you need a new mentor.”
“Your old one obviously wasn’t up to snuff,” Clotho said.
“So we’re assigning you one,” Lachesis said.
Travers held his breath. He couldn’t help it. Bartholomew waddled away from him, heading toward the bathroom. Kyle followed, as if the conflic
t in front of him didn’t interest him.
But Travers felt like everything was about to change.
“The only person who can teach you now is Zoe,” Atropos said.
“Because, after all,” Clotho said, throwing an impish look at Zoe, “you are the closest mage.”
Travers looked at Zoe, who stared at him. Her mouth was slightly open, in a seductive, kissable way. How could he learn anything from her? He would never be able to concentrate. He wouldn’t be able to think of anything at all when he saw how her dark hair curled ever so slightly against her high cheekbones, how her shapely legs rested so comfortably on the desktop, how long those shapely legs were, and—
“No,” Zoe said.
“No?” Travers asked. He hadn’t even propositioned her yet. Not that he would with his son in the room. His son and three strange women. His son, three strange women, and the smelliest dog he had ever encountered.
“No,” Zoe said, but it soon became clear she wasn’t talking to him. “Las Vegas is lousy with mages. Get one of them.”
“Do I get a vote?” Travers asked.
“No,” all four women said to him in unison.
That annoyed him, and made him stop thinking of Zoe as a beautiful woman for a moment. His concentration returned and as he turned to the Fates—who really were becoming a single unit in his mind, which was also unnerving him—he asked, “I thought you guys weren’t in charge anymore.”
“We will be,” Lachesis said.
“If Zoe helps us,” Atropos said.
“It’s only a matter of time,” Clotho said.
“But for now,” Travers said, “you have no power at all.”
“Oh,” Zoe said. “I see where you’re going with this.”
He nodded at her and she sat up, swinging those luscious legs off the desk.
“You can’t make me his mentor,” Zoe said, “because you have no authority for that.”
“But he needs one,” Lachesis said.
“And do you really want those children to assign him one?” Atropos asked.
Zoe gritted her teeth. “You’re going to guilt me into this, aren’t you?”
“Well, no,” Clotho said. “You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.”
“But,” Lachesis said, and she was not smiling, “if we do get our power back, we will remember this and—”
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