Fates 06 - Totally Spellbound

by Kristine Grayson

“We might take you up on that,” Travers said.

  “Just not here, please.” Kyle put his hands over his ears. He was blushing furiously. “I don’t want to think about this stuff.”

  Travers laughed. “Promise, kiddo. I don’t want you thinking about that stuff ever, although I supposed I won’t be able to stop you some day.”

  “Stop now!” Kyle said, his eyes squinched shut.

  Megan shook her head.

  Travers kissed Kyle on the crown of his head, then smoothed the hair over the kiss. “See you soon, kid.”

  Kyle nodded.

  Zoe waved at them both, and then she and Travers almost skipped out the door.

  “You can put your hands down now,” Megan said.

  “Not yet,” Kyle said tightly. He brought his knees up to his chest and wrapped himself in a ball. “They’re broadcasting from the hallway.”

  Megan put her arm around her nephew and pulled him close. “I’m so sorry I never realized what was going on.”

  He relaxed against her. “It’s okay,” he said after a moment. “You know now.”

  “Yeah.” And it baffled her. How had Kyle grown up to be so normal with everyone else’s thoughts in his head? How had he been able to tell the difference between himself and other people?

  “Great-Aunt Eugenia taught me,” Kyle said.

  “What?”

  He brought his arms down and slid his legs to one side, leaning hard on Megan.

  “Great-Aunt Eugenia. She came to visit when I was really little, and she showed me, inside my own head, how to keep private if I had to.”

  Megan blinked. Something about this sounded familiar. She’d talked with Great-Aunt Eugenia too about privacy. Great-Aunt Eugenia had been such an outrageous woman, with her flowing clothes, her booming voice, and her strong opinions, that Megan had never been sure whether the conversation had happened or if she had only imagined it.

  At that moment, the door to the suite banged open.

  The three women who called themselves Fates poured into the room.

  “We need a driver,” Clotho said. She was wearing tight blue jeans, a pink blouse, and high-heeled sandals. Her makeup was perfect, just light enough to kiss her skin, and her hair seemed even blonder than it had the day before. She resembled nothing more than a life-sized Barbie doll.

  “Quickly!” Lachesis said. The cream-colored blouse she wore untucked over a pair of stone-washed jeans gave her voluptuousness a studied air.

  “We can’t miss this opportunity!” said Atropos. Her tight black capri pants, white blouse, and slippers made her seem like an exotic version of Mary Tyler Moore from the Dick Van Dyke show.

  “The front desk will get you a cab,” Megan said. She wasn’t going to get sucked into these women’s vortex. They’d had enough influence on her family.

  “Aunt Megan. You got a car,” Kyle said.

  “And we wouldn’t all fit in it,” Megan said. “It’s a Mini Cooper.”

  “We can squeeze,” Clotho said. “We’ve done such things before.”

  “Please,” Lachesis said. “We only have an hour.”

  “They’ll get lost,” Kyle said.

  “No one gets lost in a cab,” Megan said. “The driver always knows where he is.”

  That wasn’t exactly true; she’d had a driver in New York when she had been there for a conference who hadn’t known where Brooklyn was. But that was different. Vegas wasn’t that hard to learn.

  “We’ll only be a phone call away if you need help,” Megan added.

  “We need help now,” Atropos said.

  “John Little says he’ll fit us in,” Clotho said.

  “He’s doing us a favor,” Lachesis said.

  “John Little.” They spoke the name as if Megan should know it. “And I should care about this why?”

  “Because true love is at stake,” Atropos said. “You should always care when love is at stake.”

  Kyle looked up at her. “Aunt Meg, they’re not kidding.”

  “I know,” Megan said. “But I don’t have to share the delusion.”

  “Please, they will get lost. They’re pretty naïve about some things.” Kyle batted those baby blues. Someday, some woman was going to get lost in those eyes. “For me?”

  Megan was already lost. She’d been lost since she’d held him as a newborn, all red and wrinkly and warm.

  She sighed. “Is this how your dad got roped in?”

  Kyle grinned. “He didn’t mind.”

  “I remember him at Viv’s wedding,” Megan said. “He minded.”

  “Oh, thank you.” Clotho clapped her hands together. “We really do need an escort at times.”

  “Kyle tries, but he’s still a tad young,” Lachesis said.

  Megan stood. She smoothed her hair, feeling very out of place next to these beautiful women. All her insecurities were back, every last one of them. Was it part of the stress she’d been feeling? Or the fact that she was leaving her practice without knowing what she was going to do next?

  “Anyone want to tell me where we’re going?” she asked.

  Atropos smiled widely. “To hire Robin Hood,” she said brightly. “We need him to steal our wheel.”

  Nine

  John Little skulked outside the main doors of the building, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. It was hard for a man of his bulk to be inconspicuous: people looked at him as they walked by almost as if they expected him to mug them.

  One of Rob’s many corporations had owned the building—or the lot it stood on—since the 1930s. Hotels had grown up around it, as had casinos, but most were shabby now. A number of them had been rebuilt, remodeled, or torn down, replaced with other hotels and casinos.

  The transformation of this neighborhood had been nothing short of miraculous. Of course, John thought most of Vegas was miraculous. He was still used to England, where some of the buildings he had visited in his youth (over 800 years ago) were still standing.

  Vegas hadn’t been around much more than a hundred years, and in that time, it had gone through more transformation than London had in all of its centuries.

  He never told Rob that he preferred Vegas. Rob liked London and the past. John still liked the fast-moving future, and hoped he would never stop liking it.

  Except he could do without the heat. Sweat ran down his face the moment he left the air-conditioning. If he’d known the women would be late, he would have brought out a bottle of water.

  He was waiting for the Fates, and for the life of him, he couldn’t understand why they hadn’t just popped in. He had been a bit stunned that they had called him—who knew that those three women understood how to operate a phone, let alone put it on conference call so that they could continue their wacky one-two-three way of speaking?

  He had been a bit freaked out when he had taken the call in his office, and he would have thought it was all a hoax, except that no one could mimic those voices or that bizarre way they talked.

  They asked him for help, and he felt that he owed them. He had bargained with them for Rob all those years ago, and they had given in. They had never asked for anything else in return.

  Until now.

  All they wanted, they had said, was a meeting with Rob. They knew feelings were still sore (their words), so they had come to John to have him set up the meeting.

  He hadn’t set up anything. He just told them to get here pronto. Then he’d take them to Rob.

  But they hadn’t gotten here pronto. Now it was half-past pronto, and they still hadn’t arrived.

  And he was getting really nervous. Had they moved him aside so that they would have some kind of weird access to Rob without John around? And if that was the case, why hadn’t they simply popped Rob out of his office and taken him to their rather stately abode near Mount Olympus?

  John wiped the sweat off his forehead and shifted his folded, lightweight suit coat to the other arm. He was about to go back inside to page Rob and make sure he was still in his office when a M
ini Cooper pulled up to the curb.

  A beautiful redhead leaned out and asked if this was the address of Chapeau Enterprises.

  “Yeah,” John said, wondering if this was part of the trick.

  “Great. Can I park here?” she asked.

  He pointed to the parking garage beneath a nearby building, and she waved merrily at him, thanking him as she drove away. He squinted at the car. It was filled to brimming, like a clown car. He saw too many heads for that tiny interior.

  Then the car disappeared into the parking garage, and he focused his attention back on the street.

  Rob would want to know where he had been and what he had been doing. John wasn’t sure he wanted to fess up to talking to the Fates, let alone setting up an appointment with them. He’d been Rob’s best friend, confidant, and occasional head-knocker for centuries now, ever since they had met near Sherwood Forest.

  Those years had been defining ones: they had lived an adventure, not realizing they had magical powers, and they had lived by their principles, something they lost briefly during the Crusades, and something Rob had struggled to maintain ever since.

  John liked the life they were living now—they were operating on a grand scale compared with the Forest—but he also knew that his friend was desperately unhappy. The unhappiness had gotten worse over time as Rob had realized how alone he was.

  He had always believed that no one could substitute for Marian, and John agreed. Marian had been an original, just like all the other women John had met had been. But Marian had been suited to Robin, and he hadn’t given any other woman a chance.

  Not in 800 years. Every hundred or so, John tried to change Rob’s attitude.

  So far he hadn’t been successful, but that didn’t make him stop trying.

  The redhead came out of the stairwell, her arm around the shoulders of a young boy. The boy had intelligent eyes and an air of magic around him that was so strong, John felt it like a slap.

  Kids shouldn’t have that much power. It was wrong. It wasn’t the way the world worked—or at least the world that John understood.

  He was so focused on the kid that for a moment, he didn’t see the three women trailing behind them.

  A blond, a brunette, and a redhead. They looked so ordinary that at first he didn’t recognize them. Then they grinned at each other, in unison, and he knew who they were.

  The Fates.

  Only they looked like half of themselves—all the power and energy that they’d always carried had disappeared. They seemed almost…normal.

  He shook that thought out of his head as the other redhead—the one with the kid—came up to him. She was built the way women should be built: sturdy, buxom, and broad, a good handful for a man who was tired of the scrawny things that passed themselves off as modern women.

  The redhead said, “Sorry to bother you again. Chapeau Enterprises is inside?”

  Her voice was rich and beautiful. This one had incredible life force, and the most charming thing about her was that she didn’t know it.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It’s—”

  And then the Fates surrounded him, yammering all at once. The redhead stood back, looking amused. The boy stayed in the middle of it all, and it wasn’t until the Fates finished speaking (they were greeting John, which he was trying to ignore), that the boy actually spoke:

  “You know Robin Hood?”

  He sounded like a star-struck fan. John looked at the Fates in great surprise. Didn’t they know better than to talk like that? No one was supposed to know mages’ real identities. Even though Robin Hood was not Rob’s real name, it was close enough to get everyone in trouble.

  “What’s going on here?” John asked.

  Clotho slipped her arm through his. It startled him. He had never been touched by a Fate before.

  “We need Robin to do us a small favor,” she said.

  “A teensy-tiny favor,” Lachesis said, moving a little too close.

  “An itty-bitty favor,” Atropos said, flanking him on the other side.

  John was surrounded, and he didn’t want to be. He was too polite—damn his chivalric upbringing—to shove women aside, much as he wanted too.

  Besides, these three terrified him more than almost anyone else he had ever met.

  “I don’t think Rob is in a favorable mood,” John said.

  “Nonetheless,” Clotho said.

  “We do need to see him,” Lachesis said.

  “Then why not pop in and visit him yourselves?” John asked.

  Atropos sighed. “It’s so very complicated.”

  “Take us to him, would you, John?” Clotho asked, and now he wanted to sigh. But he didn’t.

  Instead, he did what they asked—and hoped he would survive the consequences.

  Nine

  John Little skulked outside the main doors of the building, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. It was hard for a man of his bulk to be inconspicuous: people looked at him as they walked by almost as if they expected him to mug them.

  One of Rob’s many corporations had owned the building—or the lot it stood on—since the 1930s. Hotels had grown up around it, as had casinos, but most were shabby now. A number of them had been rebuilt, remodeled, or torn down, replaced with other hotels and casinos.

  The transformation of this neighborhood had been nothing short of miraculous. Of course, John thought most of Vegas was miraculous. He was still used to England, where some of the buildings he had visited in his youth (over 800 years ago) were still standing.

  Vegas hadn’t been around much more than a hundred years, and in that time, it had gone through more transformation than London had in all of its centuries.

  He never told Rob that he preferred Vegas. Rob liked London and the past. John still liked the fast-moving future, and hoped he would never stop liking it.

  Except he could do without the heat. Sweat ran down his face the moment he left the air-conditioning. If he’d known the women would be late, he would have brought out a bottle of water.

  He was waiting for the Fates, and for the life of him, he couldn’t understand why they hadn’t just popped in. He had been a bit stunned that they had called him—who knew that those three women understood how to operate a phone, let alone put it on conference call so that they could continue their wacky one-two-three way of speaking?

  He had been a bit freaked out when he had taken the call in his office, and he would have thought it was all a hoax, except that no one could mimic those voices or that bizarre way they talked.

  They asked him for help, and he felt that he owed them. He had bargained with them for Rob all those years ago, and they had given in. They had never asked for anything else in return.

  Until now.

  All they wanted, they had said, was a meeting with Rob. They knew feelings were still sore (their words), so they had come to John to have him set up the meeting.

  He hadn’t set up anything. He just told them to get here pronto. Then he’d take them to Rob.

  But they hadn’t gotten here pronto. Now it was half-past pronto, and they still hadn’t arrived.

  And he was getting really nervous. Had they moved him aside so that they would have some kind of weird access to Rob without John around? And if that was the case, why hadn’t they simply popped Rob out of his office and taken him to their rather stately abode near Mount Olympus?

  John wiped the sweat off his forehead and shifted his folded, lightweight suit coat to the other arm. He was about to go back inside to page Rob and make sure he was still in his office when a Mini Cooper pulled up to the curb.

  A beautiful redhead leaned out and asked if this was the address of Chapeau Enterprises.

  “Yeah,” John said, wondering if this was part of the trick.

  “Great. Can I park here?” she asked.

  He pointed to the parking garage beneath a nearby building, and she waved merrily at him, thanking him as she drove away. He squinted at the car. It was filled to brimming, like a cl
own car. He saw too many heads for that tiny interior.

  Then the car disappeared into the parking garage, and he focused his attention back on the street.

  Rob would want to know where he had been and what he had been doing. John wasn’t sure he wanted to fess up to talking to the Fates, let alone setting up an appointment with them. He’d been Rob’s best friend, confidant, and occasional head-knocker for centuries now, ever since they had met near Sherwood Forest.

  Those years had been defining ones: they had lived an adventure, not realizing they had magical powers, and they had lived by their principles, something they lost briefly during the Crusades, and something Rob had struggled to maintain ever since.

  John liked the life they were living now—they were operating on a grand scale compared with the Forest—but he also knew that his friend was desperately unhappy. The unhappiness had gotten worse over time as Rob had realized how alone he was.

  He had always believed that no one could substitute for Marian, and John agreed. Marian had been an original, just like all the other women John had met had been. But Marian had been suited to Robin, and he hadn’t given any other woman a chance.

  Not in 800 years. Every hundred or so, John tried to change Rob’s attitude.

  So far he hadn’t been successful, but that didn’t make him stop trying.

  The redhead came out of the stairwell, her arm around the shoulders of a young boy. The boy had intelligent eyes and an air of magic around him that was so strong, John felt it like a slap.

  Kids shouldn’t have that much power. It was wrong. It wasn’t the way the world worked—or at least the world that John understood.

  He was so focused on the kid that for a moment, he didn’t see the three women trailing behind them.

  A blond, a brunette, and a redhead. They looked so ordinary that at first he didn’t recognize them. Then they grinned at each other, in unison, and he knew who they were.

  The Fates.

  Only they looked like half of themselves—all the power and energy that they’d always carried had disappeared. They seemed almost…normal.

  He shook that thought out of his head as the other redhead—the one with the kid—came up to him. She was built the way women should be built: sturdy, buxom, and broad, a good handful for a man who was tired of the scrawny things that passed themselves off as modern women.