He hadn’t needed these Fates to remind him of that, and all the lost years, the years away from his beloved.
You might miss your love altogether if you do not open your eyes, Atropos said.
It was hard for him to focus on them. The sadness that he thought he had put aside when he had tried to save Marian’s life was beginning to overwhelm him.
If you do not see how like follows like, Clotho said.
If you do not listen to the prophecy, Lachesis said.
You have never asked us your birth prophecy. It’s time you hear it. Atropos looked mysterious and strong, standing against the pillar.
You shall regain your true self, Clotho said.
And save the world for true love, Lachesis said.
If only you recognize that true love has many lives, Atropos said.
You denied me that life, Rob snapped. He could take no more. He clapped his hands together, casting a powerful spell that flung him away from the Fates and their so-called justice.
Later, he found out through Little John that the Fates had nearly imprisoned him after that insolence. Only John’s argument, and Rob’s obvious grief, prevented it.
“I didn’t mean that,” John was saying. “I didn’t mean to bring up Marian again. Really. I meant besides then. You know, in the past 800 years.”
Rob must have had an expression, then, something that told his best friend he had been reliving the prelude to the worst moment of his life.
Even now, he could barely think of that day, holding the frail shell of the woman he’d loved as she died in his arms, knowing that he had the power to save her—and everything he would do, everything he would try—would be reversed by those evil Fates.
“It’s all right,” Rob said, shoving his plate away. The food no longer seemed appealing. “I know what you meant.”
The good humor was gone from John’s face. He finally seemed to understand why Rob wasn’t going to use his magic for something as trivial as finding an attractive woman.
If he hadn’t been able to use that magic for something crucial, he wasn’t going to waste it on a whim.
“I just think it’s important, you know?” John said. “I think you had a sign last night, and I think you need to act on it.”
“A sign from the Fates?” Rob asked with more than a touch of bitterness.
John shrugged.
“I did what they wanted one too many times,” Rob said. “I don’t care about their signs.”
John sighed. “Maybe you should,” he said, almost to himself. “Maybe you should.”
Eight
Megan spent most of the morning on the phone, making sure that she truly had tied up all of her loose ends. She used the phone in her suite—which Travers swore she deserved (what had Zoe done to him, anyway? Whatever it was, Megan was starting to like it)—and then she returned to Travers’ for lunch with Kyle.
She and Kyle finished first and went to the couch while Zoe and Travers discussed wedding dates.
“Dad’s gonna leave soon,” Kyle whispered to her. “You wanna do something fun?”
“Like what?” she asked, not questioning Kyle’s knowledge of his father’s future plans.
“Star Trek Experience, maybe?”
“You’ve already seen that,” his father said from across the room.
“With the Fates. It wasn’t the same. They really weren’t into Star Trek.” Kyle looked at his dad as he said this last. “Aunt Meg loves Star Trek.”
“Classic,” Megan said. She had a thing for the young William Shatner that none of her friends ever understood.
“I’m saying no on a repeat of the Star Trek Experience,” Travers said. “How about something wholesome? There’s got to be some museums around here.”
“In Vegas?” Megan asked.
“There’s a neon place,” Kyle said.
“Not to mention the Elvis-A-Rama and the Liberace Museum.” Zoe came in from the kitchen, munching on a candy bar.
Megan suppressed a sigh. How did women like that stay so slim when they ate so poorly?
“I don’t think either of those are for Kyle either,” Zoe continued. “But there’s a children’s museum that’s across the street from the Natural History Museum.”
Kyle blatted a Bronx cheer. Megan had to work to suppress a smile. She’d had the same reaction—mentally, at least.
“We can find something to do, can’t we, boyo?” she said. “If nothing else, we can go to the water park I saw.”
“No,” Travers said. “The last time Kyle went there, he got a hideous sunburn.”
Megan looked at the boy. His skin was fine, so it couldn’t have been on this trip. “The last time? You’ve brought Kyle to Vegas before?”
Zoe and Travers exchanged a look. “Long story,” Travers said after a minute.
“And it wasn’t my fault,” Kyle said. “The Fates didn’t have any sunscreen.”
“You’ve spent a lot of time with those women,” Megan said, trying to keep the disapproval from her voice.
Kyle shrugged. “I like them, even if they don’t know much about Star Trek.”
“They shouldn’t bother you too much,” Travers said. “They have some business of their own to take care of.”
“With the Faeries,” Megan said, keeping her tone flat.
“Yeah.” Zoe finished the last of the candy bar. “Now that we found the wheel for them.”
Zoe and Travers were serious. Megan resisted the urge to shake her head. She had accepted the psychic part—she was aware of the studies conducted in the 1970s that showed psychic powers existed (even if all her professors had debunked those studies)—and she had been around Kyle for eleven years. She liked the psychic explanation a lot better than the intuitive one. If the kid had been as intuitive as she had given him credit for, then he would have to have been almost superhuman.
She smiled to herself. For some reason, she didn’t think that psychics were superhuman but that intuitive people were. That was one for her own shrink to figure out.
“Megan,” Travers said, putting a hand on her shoulder. She started. She hadn’t heard him approach. “We’re going to get a marriage license. It shouldn’t take long, but I’m leaving Kyle with you, if you don’t mind.”
“That’s what I’m here for,” she said a little too brightly. “And you can take as much time as you need. Maybe a little…alone time…would be appropriate?”
Travers grinned at Zoe, who grinned back.
“We’ve been so busy saving the world that we really haven’t had time for ourselves,” Zoe said, and once again there was no real irony in her voice.
“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 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 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 alon
e 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.
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