Absolutely Captivated

by Grayson, Kristine

  “Fang?” Travers somehow managed to speak with a straight face. “He wants to be called Fang?”

  “Well, he would have insisted on Bruiser, but people might have thought that was a joke.” Kyle spoke with complete seriousness. “So he’s settling for Fang.”

  “You want me to own a dachshund named Fang.” Travers still had a straight face, but his tone had become a little deeper, as if he were trying to hold in his emotions.

  “You can’t really own him, Dad,” Kyle said. “He’s a familiar. But he’d be a good one, provided you don’t rip people off.”

  “Rip people off doing what?” Travers asked.

  “Accounting, I guess,” Kyle said. “His previous owner—familiar guy—whatever—”

  “Mage,” Atropos whispered.

  “Yeah, him,” Kyle said. “I guess he ripped people off, and Bartho—I mean, Fang—doesn’t want to do it anymore.”

  “Good for him,” Travers said. “But I don’t need a familiar.”

  “Yes, you do!” Kyle spoke in unison with the Fates this time. Both Travers and Zoe jumped. Then they looked at each other, and Zoe could tell that Travers liked Kyle speaking with the Fates even less than she did.

  “I don’t want a pet,” Travers said.

  “He wouldn’t be a pet, Dad,” Kyle said. “I keep telling you that. He’s a familiar.”

  “Tell you what.” Zoe was ready to have this day over with. “You take the Fates; I’ll take the dog. I’m in between familiars, too.”

  The dachshund’s tail sagged and his round little body wilted. Even his head went down.

  You didn’t have to be psychic to know that Bartholomew, a.k.a. Fang, didn’t want to go home with Zoe.

  “No deal,” Travers said.

  “Besides,” Clotho said, “he needs a familiar.”

  “As well as a mentor,” Lachesis said rather pointedly.

  “His magic, now that he has acknowledged it, will really go awry,” Atropos said.

  Zoe looked from them to the boy and back to Travers. “I’m supposed to feel guilty about this?” she asked, not because they wanted her to, but because she already did.

  Feel guilty, that is. She felt like she wasn’t doing her part, whatever her part was supposed to be.

  “No,” the Fates said.

  “Yes,” Kyle said.

  The dog added a little yip.

  “You must help us,” Clotho said. “You’re the only person we can turn to.”

  That turned Zoe’s guilt into anger. She hated being bullied. “As I said, there are a great number of mages in Las Vegas alone. I’m sure you’ll find someone to help you.”

  “But Zanthia,” Lachesis said, deliberately taking power by using Zoe’s very real, very impractical name, “you are the only detective among our people. You are the only person who can find our wheel without resorting to excessive magic.”

  “Wheel?” Zoe asked before she could stop herself.

  “Yes,” Atropos said. “That’s why we’re here.”

  “We really don’t need a baby-sitter,” Clotho said, but behind her, Kyle mouthed Yes, they do.

  Travers rolled his eyes. Bartholomew—Fang—the dang dachshund—kicked his squat little legs, and forced Kyle to set him down. The dog ran to Travers, sat in front of him, and rose on his hind legs into a begging position.

  It was the only cute thing Zoe had ever seen the dachshund do.

  “I don’t have food,” Travers said, rather plaintively.

  “He can’t be hungry,” Zoe said. “He ate more meat than Tony Roma’s serves in a month.”

  The dog looked up at Travers with soulful eyes. His long ears trailed down his back and his snout was pointed directly at Travers’ face. The dog now looked like a pillar with a dachshund head.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Travers said, and crouched. The dog got down, and his tail wagged. He licked Travers’ hands and then put his paws on Travers’ knees, and went for his face. Travers shook his head.

  “Can we keep him, Dad?” Kyle asked again.

  “I’m not taking care of the Fates,” Zoe said.

  “We can’t split up now,” Lachesis said.

  “I was thinking that the three of you go on your merry way,” Zoe said to the Fates, “I’ll stay here, and Kyle, his dad, and the dog can go on their way.”

  “How do you convince people without magic?” Atropos asked the other Fates.

  “Everyone here has magic,” Clotho said. “Or will.”

  “No, goofy,” Lachesis said. “She means how do you convince without magic?”

  “Like she knows,” Atropos said. She sank into her chair.

  Zoe felt the guilt return. She sighed. “You do it,” she said, “by presenting a coherent argument.”

  Travers picked up the dog, then wiped his face with the back of his hand. “You’re not helping yourself here,” he said to her.

  She grinned at him. “Neither are you.”

  For a moment, they were the only two people in the room. No boy, no dog, no Fates. Just her and Travers, grinning at each other like teenagers.

  And they shouldn’t grin. Not with what they were both thinking.

  They were both thinking of giving in.

  Zoe sighed, and so did Travers. They sighed in unison, as if they were as closely connected as the Fates.

  A little shiver ran through Zoe. But it wasn’t an unpleasant sensation. If she wanted to connect with anyone, it was Travers Kinneally.

  There was a certain inevitability to the day. Zoe wouldn’t get her bath and her romance novel, but she might get something else—a memorable few days, if nothing else.

  But there was no way Zoe would go into Faerie. Not for the Fates, not for the sexiest man she’d ever met.

  Not for anything.

  Twelve

  Parenting had taught Travers many skills he never thought he would gain. Patience was one. Enjoyment of someone else’s company was another.

  And the third, which in some ways was the most important, was knowing when and where to pick your battles.

  Travers had picked this small, badly air-conditioned office for his battle, and he had lost long before the first five-dollar bill had fallen from the ceiling. He had probably lost when his sister Vivian had batted her dark brown eyes at him and asked him to take her friends to Los Angeles. He had certainly lost when his son had fallen in love with an overweight dachshund who thought he was a rottweiler.

  So Travers gave in. The worst he would get was a dachshund. It looked like Zoe might get custody of the Fates.

  Which was not a—fate—he would wish on anyone.

  At his suggestion, they left the office and went to the Strip. He and Kyle—and the Fates, apparently—needed a hotel room, and Zoe knew some people who knew some people who might give him a package for the week to take the sting out of the price.

  They finally picked a no-name hotel just off the Strip, one that only had video poker machines and a few slots, nothing that was really considered gambling, at least not in a town like Las Vegas.

  Zoe had come with them, squeezing into Travers’ SUV rather than taking her own car. She said that going to the Strip made the trip easy for her, because if she wanted to leave, she could just take a cab.

  But from what he was learning, if she wanted to leave, she could just snap her fingers, wiggle her nose, or mutter some magic charm and vanish.

  He could probably do that, too, which gave him the shivers.

  Just like that pink elephant had. The pink elephant that Zoe made disappear before she unspelled the front door of her office, before she conjured up a leash for Bartholomew Fang.

  Bartholomew Fang. That name rather suited the dog. Travers couldn’t think of the poor creature as Bartholomew, and he certainly wasn’t your average Fang.

  Or even your below-average Fang. The poor dog would simply have to understand that being called Fang all by itself was as much of a joke as being called Bruiser.

  Zoe gave Bartholomew Fang a
nd his leash to Kyle, which surprised Travers, since he thought the dog was supposed to be his. But Travers really didn’t mind, and Kyle liked the animal. Kyle seemed focused on him, while Travers was focused on the next few hours.

  He had surprised himself by deciding to stay.

  Travers had stepped out of the humid, smelly, moldy climes of that small office into the Vegas heat and had wilted, glad he had decided to end the standoff, and not as sorry that he had lost as he had expected to be.

  Part of that was Zoe. For the first time since his marriage, Travers let the idea of being around a woman dictate his actions.

  And he tried to keep that thought to himself. He didn’t want Kyle to know.

  He certainly didn’t want to think about it. Nor did he want to think about the lighter feeling he’d had since the magic stopped whooshing out of him. Not because he’d used it—no. He’d been using it for years just like everyone said, only he’d been coming up with other explanations.

  Rationales that seemed to work for his logical brain, sort of. Part of his mind, the subconscious, maybe the truly logical part, had known that even with each rationale, the statistical anomaly of his luck with numbers was so extreme that something else had to be causing it.

  And if Travers admitted that his son had psychic powers, then he would be admitting that magic—or things beyond his ken—actually existed. Then he would have to admit that his skill with numbers, his older sister’s psychic hotline, his Great-Aunt Eugenia’s ability to appear at just the right moments, all of those things had an explanation other than the surface one.

  Of course, it had taken three women out of Greek mythology, an overweight dog, and the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life to convince him. Oh, yeah, and a storm of money as well as one stuffed, obscenely pink elephant.

  Because of the stress, because of the changes, Travers had decided to get his own room. He had rented two suites in the no-name hotel—one suite for him and Kyle, and the other for the Fates—and Zoe had done the negotiating with the people who owned the place.

  While she had done that, Travers had tried not to hyperventilate. As well off as he was, he never spent a lot of money. He wasn’t going to change that habit—he had learned as a CPA that frugality kept the rich rich—but he would be comfortable, at least for the next few days while four women reorganized his life.

  For a no-name hotel, the suite was pretty impressive. Two large rooms in the center had a kitchen and a living room big enough to seat the Fates, the pink elephant, and all of their friends. Travers’ own bedroom had another sitting area walled off from the bed with stained glass. He could hibernate if he wanted to, and not even see Kyle.

  Kyle’s room was a little smaller, but not much. He also had his own television, which Travers had restricted when he checked in so that Kyle couldn’t get Pay-Per-View movies, HBO, or any other channel that wasn’t child-friendly.

  Travers might be reorganizing his life, but he wasn’t going to overlook his kid. Not even in the small details.

  The hotel didn’t mind the dog, either. In fact, the woman at the desk had food and water dishes, as well as a doggie bed, delivered to the room.

  The suite he had gotten for the Fates was like his, only with three bedrooms. He had inspected it briefly, but the women declared it fine, so he didn’t worry about it much.

  Zoe had remained downstairs, finishing the negotiations, and he hoped she would stay. She had looked shell-shocked on the drive. Shell-shocked, exhausted, and slightly defeated. Something more than the Fates disturbed her, and Travers wanted to know what it was.

  He wanted to know everything he could about her, which scared him. He had vowed, when Cheryl left, that he wouldn’t get involved with another woman until Kyle was grown. But Kyle wasn’t near adulthood yet, and here was Zoe—exotic, intriguing, and obviously dangerous.

  Travers sat on the edge of the bed. It felt odd to be in a hotel room and not have anything to unpack. He would have to get clothes for himself and for Kyle, as well as toothbrushes and all the other essentials.

  Travers felt overwhelmed by that, too. He’d never been impulsive before. He’d never changed his plans in the middle of an afternoon, not once in his entire life.

  Someone knocked at the door. In the other room, Bartholomew Fang yipped and Kyle shushed him. Travers pulled open his bedroom door as Kyle opened the door to the suite.

  Zoe walked in as if she were the one staying here. Her stride was confident, but when Travers saw her face, he realized that she didn’t seem confident at all. Her skin was paler than it had been, and she had frown lines beside her mouth. She dropped her purse beside the couch and leaned on it as if she needed something to hold her up.

  “Everything work out at the desk?” Travers asked.

  She nodded. “You’re getting off-season rates, with a corporate discount and complimentary breakfast. It was the best they could do.”

  By Travers’ quick math, that meant she had saved him nearly five hundred dollars over seven days. And she was apologizing.

  “Sounds good to me,” he said.

  “Is it room service?” Kyle asked.

  Zoe bent down to pat Bartholomew Fang. The dog wiggled his entire body in excitement, looking like a brown balloon animal that was about to explode.

  “I have a hunch the complimentary breakfast is in the buffet,” Travers said to his son.

  Kyle frowned at him, obviously expecting Zoe to answer. But Zoe seemed preoccupied.

  She stood and gave Travers a distant smile. He didn’t like the distance. That connection he had felt to her earlier, when she had finally given in and asked the Fates to give her a coherent argument, was gone.

  He missed it.

  “I suppose we should round up the Fates,” she said.

  He didn’t want to round up the Fates. He was tired of those three women. Their constant conversation, their ability to find the heart of a matter and expose it, their strange way of viewing the world, made them seem like forty women instead of three.

  Before he saw them, he wanted to talk to Zoe Sinclair, see if he really liked her. Even though there had been that connection in her office, he wasn’t sure if it had been because they were both stressed and pushing against similar things (read: the Fates) or if they truly had something in common.

  And he wanted to see past her beauty, to see if the woman behind it was someone he would enjoy as much as parts of him seemed to think he would.

  He certainly hoped he wasn’t broadcasting his thoughts this time, but Kyle wasn’t complaining. He also didn’t seem to be blushing. Instead, he had bent down, picked up Bartholomew Fang, and held him so that Zoe could keep petting him.

  “Don’t you think?” she asked Travers.

  For a moment, he thought he had lost the thread of the conversation. Then he realized that he had been silent too long and she had simply reminded him that she had asked him to go with her to get the Fates.

  “Before we go,” Travers said, “I need to apologize.”

  “For what?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Kyle said. “For what?”

  Travers gave his son his best parental this-is-none-of-your-business look, one that was always guaranteed to work. Of course, now Travers wondered if the look worked because he had the glare down pat or if he broadcast his thoughts when he had that expression on his face.

  “Both, Dad,” Kyle muttered.

  Zoe looked back and forth between them. She seemed to know what was going on.

  “Well, then,” Travers said, “catch the hint.”

  Kyle sighed and carried Bartholomew Fang into the suite’s kitchen. The dog’s tail started pinwheeling when he realized where they were going.

  “Apologize for what?” Zoe asked softly.

  “How harsh I was in your office,” Travers said. “I shouldn’t have threatened to abandon the Fates. It’s pretty clear that they can’t survive on their own.”

  Zoe shrugged one shoulder. “I’m sure they can surviv
e just fine.”

  “They don’t even understand money,” Travers said. “They thought three dollars would buy them a bus ticket.”

  “And they would learn fairly quickly that it can’t.” Zoe sighed. “They’re older and smarter than both of us. They’d learn how to survive.”

  “I’m just sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t fair to you.”

  She looked at him then—really focused those brown-and-gold eyes on him, and he had to concentrate not to get lost in them. “It seems to me that no one was fair to you,” she said. “No one’s bothered to explain anything to you. About them, about Kyle. About yourself.”

  He felt his cheeks warm more. “I’m sure they’ve tried.”

  “A lot of us refuse to believe when we learn about magic,” Zoe said. “That doesn’t mean your mentor should have given up.”

  “I don’t even know who this mysterious mentor was,” Travers said, “so it really doesn’t matter.”

  She put her hand on his arm. “All I’m saying is that you don’t have to apologize to me. It’s been an unusual day for you, and you’ve been under strain.”

  That was an understatement. He felt like he’d been through an emotional wringer—and he wasn’t an emotional man.

  “It just looks like you’re under a strain, too,” he said.

  She gave him that look again. Each time she did, she tilted her head sideways, as if she could see him clearer through the corners of her eyes. Her black hair fell against her cheek like a caress.

  “I’m fine,” she said, obviously lying.

  He decided to try again. “What’s wrong with the place they want you to go?”

  She sighed, and looked at one of the couches. “Mind if I sit?”

  “Be my guest.” Travers swept a hand around the room as if he had decorated it himself.

  Not that he would have. There were three couches—which was one too many for the size—and only one easy chair. The end tables were scuffed, and the art was badly done photographs of Vegas at night. The vases, filled with fresh flowers, were plastic, and the see-through table in the kitchen was made of plastic instead of glass.

  Zoe sat on the nearest couch, pulled off a high-heeled shoe, and rubbed her delicate foot. Travers thought of offering to help her, but had a hunch she’d balk.