Totally Spellbound

by Kristine Grayson

  “Like fix breakfast.” Megan was beginning to understand. And it bothered her. She was also beginning to feel embarrassed about how rude she’d been. “How about having some?”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Travers said.

  “I was asking Zoe,” Megan said. “Not you.”

  “Stop fighting,” Kyle said. “Please.”

  Megan looked at her nephew. His nose was red, which had always been the first sign of tears. He looked miserable.

  Now she remembered why she had given up sparring with her brother. It upset her nephew. It had upset him from the moment he was born.

  “I’m sorry, Kyle,” Megan said. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  He nodded, grabbed a slice of bacon off his plate, and slipped it to the dog. Everyone saw the movement, and no one complained about it.

  “Have some breakfast, Trav,” Megan said. “After all, you’re paying for it.”

  “I have a hunch I’m going to pay for a lot of things today,” he said and slipped into a chair.

  But he didn’t look unhappy. He looked like a man with a plan.

  A plan that would probably make Megan unhappy.

  “Tell her, Dad,” Kyle said, still feeding bacon to the dog.

  “Huh?” Travers frowned at his son.

  “What you and Zoe just did.” Kyle still wasn’t looking at him.

  “I really don’t want to know that,” Megan said. Besides, she could guess, considering how well kissed each of them looked.

  “You mean in Faerie?” Travers asked.

  Whatever he wanted to call it, Megan thought but didn’t say.

  “No.” Kyle finally looked up, his frown matching his father’s.

  “He knows,” Zoe said to Travers.

  “Oh.” Travers’ eyes widened. “I’m never going to get used to the psychic thing. Sometimes I think it was better when I didn’t know.”

  Kyle’s cheeks reddened. He had clearly taken that badly. “I can’t shut it off.”

  “I know,” Travers said, and sighed.

  “We should really discuss that,” Megan said. “If Kyle has truly been able to read adult thoughts since he was pre-verbal, then he might have some issues—”

  “I don’t have issues,” Kyle said. He grabbed another piece of bacon, and this time, he ate it. Fang put his paws on Kyle’s lap, his nose pointing upward, his little tail pinwheeling. “Dad, just tell her what’s going on.”

  Travers glanced at Megan, then at Kyle. Then back at Megan. “You’re right,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to deal with it since I found out about it. It’s just been so crazy here.”

  “In a good way, I hope,” Zoe said with a smile.

  Megan frowned. What she had seen in the last few hours hadn’t been all that good.

  “I’m sure you can help him during the next few days,” Travers said.

  Megan stiffened. She had a hunch she wasn’t going to like what was coming next. “The next few days?”

  “Zoe and I are getting married, and then we’d like a few days to ourselves. Can you stay? We’d really like to get this over with—”

  “Such a romantic,” Zoe said with a smile.

  “You’re the one who said Elvis chapel and black roses,” Travers said.

  She shrugged. “And I meant it too.”

  “Mom and Dad won’t like that,” Megan said.

  “They didn’t like it when I got married the first time,” Travers said.

  “And they were right,” Megan said.

  “What I mean is that they had the big wedding with me and Cheryl, and look what good it got us.”

  Kyle’s cheeks got even redder.

  “I think it got you a lot of good,” Megan said, looking pointedly at Kyle.

  Travers reached over and put a hand on his son’s shoulder. “I just meant me and your mom, Kyle. You know you’re the most important person in my life.”

  Kyle nodded, but his gaze didn’t meet his father’s. “I would much rather have Zoe for a mom anyway,” Kyle said bravely.

  Of course he would. Cheryl hadn’t been a mother at all. She had had dreams of home and family, but when the realities had hit her—the tiny apartment, the lack of money, the fussy baby—she had fled, leaving Travers to raise Kyle alone.

  Megan had disliked Cheryl even before Travers had married her. Cheryl had seemed shallow to her, almost emotionless. Megan had somehow known from the moment she had seen her how much Cheryl would hurt her brother.

  Megan looked at Zoe. She liked Zoe, even though she wasn’t sure she wanted to.

  And her brother was clearly head over heels in love with her.

  “Kyle,” Zoe said, “I’m not sure it’s right that we cut you out of the honeymoon. I mean, you’re going to be a big part of this relationship, and maybe—”

  “Go along on a trip where you’re supposed to just have sex and junk?” Kyle wrinkled his nose. “I don’t think so.”

  “I didn’t mean that you’d be around for the private parts,” Zoe said, digging herself in deeper. “I just meant maybe we should rethink the honeymoon part, and take a family trip. It’d be fairer. After all, this is a surprise for you too.”

  “No, it’s not,” Kyle said.

  “We didn’t know until a few minutes ago,” Travers said.

  “You knew from the minute you met,” Kyle said. “You were just scared, that’s all.”

  He sounded contemptuous, and oh-so-much-older than he really was. He also sounded like a little boy who was trying to be strong for the adults around him.

  Megan’s heart went out to him. “Of course I’ll stay with Kyle while you two go off and have sex and junk.”

  Travers glared at her, but Zoe gave her a fond smile.

  “And I think I understand why you want to avoid the big wedding. But wouldn’t it be nice to wait a few days so that the whole family can come? I think Mom and Dad would like it, and I’m sure Zoe has family who would want to be here.”

  “No,” Zoe said softly, “I don’t. But there are a few friends that I wouldn’t mind asking.”

  Travers looked at her with surprise. “I’m sorry. I just assumed that we’d do this fast. You said Elvis chapel.”

  Zoe smiled at him, and the smile was still fond. Megan would have been ripping his eyes out. Of course, that could be because he was her brother and not the guy she wanted to spend happily ever after with.

  “I think fast is good,” Zoe said. “But it wouldn’t hurt to give family and friends a day or two to get here. Then maybe we could find someone to care for Kyle if Megan can’t. I mean, you didn’t really ask her. You sort of demanded, and she has a job, right, Megan?”

  “Actually.” Megan poured herself a cup of coffee. “Not exactly. Not anymore.”

  “You finally shut down the practice?” Travers asked.

  She nodded. She didn’t even feel sad about it, even though she should have. She just had a few loose ends to wrap up, and those wouldn’t take much effort.

  “Good,” he said. “Those rich kids weren’t your style anyway.”

  “Those rich kids need good old-fashioned discipline, and parents who are home most of the time,” Megan said. “They are overindulged and underloved.”

  Then she realized how harsh she sounded. Everyone stared at her with surprise. Except Travers, who was smiling at her. Fondly.

  Where was all this fondness coming from?

  “Guess you could say I’m burned out,” Megan said.

  “I’m a rich kid,” Kyle said, “and I’m not overindulged.”

  “Or underloved,” Travers said.

  “And you’re not taking Ritalin or Prozac or a host of other psychotropic medications for conditions that have nothing to do with medicine and everything to do with convenience,” Megan said. “You should have heard some parents when I suggested taking their kid off antidepressants, and figuring out what was really going on. It was like I’d suggested shooting them or something.”

  “Sounds like they need you,�
�� Zoe said softly.

  Megan shook her head. “I didn’t make a difference. They’d just take the poor child elsewhere.”

  “That’s what you want?” Zoe asked. “To make a difference?”

  “Isn’t that what we all want?” Megan asked.

  “Not in the same way, Aunt Meg,” Kyle said. “You want to save the world.”

  “One child at a time,” Travers added. “Mind starting with mine? He’s gonna need company for a week, maybe more. How’s a week, Zoe?”

  She grinned at him. “I think it’ll do.”

  Seven

  “Do you know how impossible it will be to find this woman?” John Little asked over lunch.

  Rob sat across from him, two plates loaded with meats and breads and salads spread before him. He had loved buffets since learning about them in Vegas in the 1940s. He’d been one of the first and best customers of Beldon Katleman’s Midnight Chuck Wagon Buffet at the original El Rancho Vegas Hotel. Now, of course, buffets cost more than a dollar, they were open for 24 hours instead of the few hours after the last entertainment show, and they had a wide variety of cuisines—not just steak and mashed potatoes and the occasional carrot.

  But the food made him nostalgic for the Vegas he had lost, a place of clear skies and such corruption that no one realized honest businessmen could thrive here, too.

  This buffet, in one of the downtown hotels, looked nothing like that old one. There were plants everywhere that blocked the patrons from each other. The only time you saw someone else was when you got up to stand in line.

  “I’m not talking about the woman anymore.” Rob had two different kinds of mashed potatoes on his plate: regular (with lumps) and garlic. Maybe he hadn’t changed as much as he thought.

  John had three plates, all of them covered with various meats—steak, brisket, roast beef, chicken, ham, and several things that Rob couldn’t immediately identify.

  He wondered if the Atkins Diet meant you could eat as much meat as you wanted all the time or if John was ignoring some of the more important precepts.

  “Listen, my friend,” John said. “You’ve been getting more and more morose as the years have gone on, and you were never a happy-go-lucky guy in the first place.”

  “My friends were called merry.” Rob ate a cherry tomato, surprised at its freshness.

  “In marked contrast to you. If you’d have had your way, you’d have talked about poverty and Good King John and the evils of government until the wee hours. The only reason we laughed back then was because of Friar Tuck, young Will, and yours truly.”

  Rob sighed. “I suppose all our success in those days came from that lack of seriousness as well.”

  “No need to be snide.” John ripped the flesh off a chicken leg. In that moment, with that movement, he looked like an old king—the kind Rob had always opposed—not King John the Pretender, however; more like King Henry the Eighth, a gluttonous, ruinous king if there had ever been one.

  “Look,” Rob said, “we have a lot more important things to do than think about some woman I’m never going to see again.”

  “I think we need to think about her.” John picked up a second chicken leg. The first one, reduced to bone, had gone onto a plate John used only for discards. “If we don’t think about her, you’ll miss the first chance you’ve had in decades, maybe centuries. And I, as a good friend and boon companion, can’t allow that to happen.”

  “Why?” Rob asked, not sure if he cared about the answer.

  “Why?” John waved the chicken leg as if it were a pointer and he was a professor giving a lecture. “Why? Because I’m the person who spends the most time with you. And it’s been a long, long time since someone has challenged you.”

  “How do you know this woman would challenge me?” Rob found more cherry tomatoes buried on his plate. He set them aside. They all looked as fresh and good as the first one.

  “Because,” John said, “she already has.”

  Rob looked up. John’s mouth was smeared with barbecue sauce, and the chicken leg was half gone. John grinned at him like a little boy who’d just won a long argument.

  “Being in that bubble was not a challenge,” Rob said. “It was an accident, I’m sure. I’m sure I built the thing wrong—”

  “After doing it for hundreds of years? Not likely.” John gnawed the last of the flesh off the chicken bone, then set it on top of the other. If he remained true to form, he would make a small sculpture out of the remains of his food before the meal was done.

  “Let it go,” Rob said.

  John shook his head. “I’ve been puzzling over this all morning.”

  “I don’t pay you to think about women on company time,” Rob said.

  “You don’t pay me,” John said. “We’re partners, and I can do whatever I damn well please. I probably should be in Ethiopia right now, overseeing the new vaccination program, but I’m tired of watching children getting stuck with needles. I need a new focus, and I’ve decided that’s you.”

  “Lucky me,” Rob muttered.

  “Look, we have lackeys to oversee all the various giveaways and training programs and medical camps. I’ve done some of this stuff for nearly five hundred years. A man needs a break now and then.”

  “So you’re focusing on my love life because you’re bored,” Rob said.

  “Your love life?” John’s eyebrows went up. “Now that’s a phrase I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use. And, oddly enough, I hadn’t used that phrase in this context either.”

  Rob finished the cherry tomatoes. The rest of the lunch looked like overkill. What had he been thinking, getting this much food?

  He always felt a little discouraged when he was done with a buffet. So much went to waste when so many people went hungry.

  He shook his head.

  “And thinking about the poor unfortunates isn’t going to get you off the hook either.”

  Rob raised his head, feeling slightly surprised that John had read him that well.

  “Sometimes people need to spread out, do something new, get a different perspective. You’re running on fumes, Rob.” John grabbed a napkin and wiped off his mouth. “So the woman’s a distraction, but she’s a good one.”

  “Who’s impossible to find, according to you.”

  John shrugged. “If we keep our vow and only use our magic for work-related things.”

  “That’s an important rule,” Rob said. “If we start behaving like every other mage and use our magic only to help ourselves, then we become no better than—”

  “—the kings we used to fight,” John finished. “Blah-de-blah-de-blah. When was the last time you used magic for yourself? Hmmm?”

  Then he blanched as he remembered the answer. Rob had used his magic to try to save Marian’s life, only to get reprimanded by the Fates.

  He had been summoned in front of the Fates after working a successful spell to reverse the aging that had caused Marian’s organs to fail. The Fates had a temple near Mount Olympus, but the place wasn’t real. The sky was too blue, the grass too green, and the temple itself too white.

  The women had had an otherworldly beauty as well, but at the time, he had seen it more as an abomination than as a blessing. How could they be so lovely—forever lovely—when his Marian had to wither and decay and die like a summer flower on a fall day?

  Each life has a termination point, Mr. Hood, Clotho had said to him that day.

  You have no right to violate the workings of destiny, Lachesis had added.

  He stood before them, a rough-hewn man who hadn’t even known about the Greek Gods until he had come back from the Crusades—a campaign that had soured him on following the lead of other men.

  He had gained respect for other cultures while away from his own. The other soldiers hadn’t. They had tried to destroy it.

  We should imprison you, Atropos said.

  He had felt alarmed at that. They were going to take away Marian’s magical good health and then imprison him so that he c
ouldn’t spend the last few days of her too-short life with her.

  If it were not for your history of good works, Clotho said, and for your love of the unfortunate Marian.

  We are sympathetic to love, Lachesis said.

  He had let out a small breath, his hands folded in front of him. He had felt so tiny, standing there. A single man warring against time and fate and rules he didn’t entirely understand.

  However, Atropos said, we cannot allow love to violate the rules of existence.

  Of course they couldn’t. Because every beloved of every mage would live forever then. As if that were wrong.

  He wasn’t sure how that was wrong.

  Much as we would like to, Clotho said with more gentleness than was necessary.

  They hadn’t wooed him, exactly, but he felt a little better. At least he would be with Marian at the end.

  Besides, Lachesis said, you have yet to find your soulmate.

  What? he snapped. Marian is my soulmate. You know that. All of England knows that. I love her more than life itself.

  And therein lies your problem, Atropos said. You have given too much too early.

  No, I haven’t, he said.

  You have a long life ahead of you, Clotho said.

  One that will be lonely if you are not careful, Lachesis said.

  Of course it will be lonely, he said. You won’t let Marian live.

  She cannot. She has lived her life, Atropos said.

  You knew she was mortal when you met her, Clotho said.

  I thought I was mortal when I met her, Rob cried.

  Then you should not have left her to fight in those silly wars, Lachesis said.

  Those silly wars were where I discovered that I couldn’t die, Rob said. He had learned, just outside Jerusalem, exactly what his powers were and how deadly they could be. He had turned away from them then; he’d never been a man to use his abilities to harm others.

  War had been the exact wrong thing for him—the greatest mistake of his life.