Totally Spellbound

by Kristine Grayson

  “The car was parked outside a casino,” Zoe said to Rob. “Everyone knew better.”

  “Why?” Megan asked.

  “Most of the casinos lead into Faerie,” Rob said.

  Megan frowned.

  Poor thing. She had to learn about the great wide world all at once. No wonder she was getting confused.

  “This map,” Zoe said, “shows Faerie as it is at this minute. It constantly changes. The entrances, the exits, the location of magical items.”

  Rob nodded. He’d seen a few other maps like this, but never one of Faerie.

  “You need to look up from it,” Zoe said to Megan. “You can lose yourself in it.”

  Megan looked up slowly and blinked. “Wow. I still see a reflection across my eyes.”

  “This map is really dangerous,” Zoe said. “I’m told that its power will only last a month, but I’m not sure of that. I do believe the warnings I got, though. They went like this: Don’t look at it too much, or you’ll lose time. Don’t hold it too long, or you’ll end up at a place of the map’s choosing. And don’t try to take magic from the map, or it might kill you. Is that clear?”

  Rob shivered. Faerie magic. The most dangerous kind. “Very.”

  “No,” Megan said. “How can a map do all that?”

  “At this stage, Meg,” Travers said, “Just accept. Believe me, it makes things a lot easier.”

  “And saves us all from pink elephants,” Zoe muttered.

  “What?” Megan asked.

  Zoe grinned. “Your brother was very hard to convince about magic. We had an incident with a pink elephant.”

  “And too many five-dollar bills,” Travers said.

  “After seeing you guys this afternoon,” Megan said, “I’m not sure I want more information.”

  “I know I don’t,” Rob said.

  The map showed all sorts of warrens and tunnels. It also showed a wide expanse marked Faerie. Entrances were all over Las Vegas, with a few in Mississippi, one in Connecticut, and a handful more in Atlantic City. The rest were scattered across Europe. Past Italy and Spain, the entrances to Faerie faded out. The Middle East, Africa, Asia, Australia, and unsurprisingly, Greece had no entrances at all.

  He couldn’t commit the map to memory though; every time he looked at it, something changed.

  “How’re we going to find anything in there?” he asked. “It’s different from minute to minute.”

  “Well,” Zoe said, “finding the wheel is actually pretty easy. Getting it out is going to be hard.”

  “Why?” Rob asked.

  “Because,” Travers said. “The wheel is the very heart of Faerie.”

  Rob wasn’t sure he’d heard this right. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s in the center of Faerie,” Zoe said, “and it powers everything.”

  “And you want me to go in there and take it out?”

  “I don’t,” Zoe said. “The Fates do.”

  “One man, alone, taking down Faerie.”

  “If anyone can do it, you can,” Zoe said, and smiled.

  Megan slipped her arm through his. “I’ll come with you.”

  “No, you won’t,” he said.

  Megan squinched up her face like she did when she thought he was controlling her. He really wasn’t controlling her, but he did have centuries more experience dealing with magic than she did. He knew a lot more about it than almost everyone in the room.

  “She probably has to go with you,” Zoe said. “That’s how the Fates work. What’s your prophecy?”

  He felt a trickle of irritation. “I have no idea.”

  “You don’t know your prophecy?” Zoe sounded shocked.

  “I don’t believe in that nonsense,” he said.

  “Then why are you helping?”

  Megan had her arms crossed. Travers was pointedly not looking at the map and was, instead, watching Rob. Zoe was the one who was frowning.

  “I’m helping,” Rob said, “because I got talked into it. Let it go at that.”

  “He’s helping because you sent him to the Interim Fates,” Megan snapped, “and he thinks I was stupid. You all think I was stupid.”

  “Misguided, maybe,” Zoe said. “No one takes on Zeus.”

  “At the expense of his children?”

  “Do you know how many children he has?” Zoe asked.

  Megan shook her head. “I gather no one does.”

  “That’s right,” Zoe said. “Hundreds, maybe thousands, some with magic, some without.”

  “Over the centuries, I trust,” Travers said.

  “Yeah,” Zoe said. “I’m sure a lot are gone now.”

  Travers shook his head. “I have trouble enough raising one. I can’t imagine raising hundreds, maybe thousands.”

  “That’s the point,” Megan said. “He isn’t raising them. He’s using them.”

  “Why is that our problem?” Zoe asked.

  Megan seemed to grow taller. Rob had never seen anything like it. “You see, that’s the problem. All you people thinking that other people should be allowed to raise their kids however they want. We pay for that dysfunction in increased crime rates, suicides, and just general misery.”

  “From Zeus?” Zoe asked.

  “From all dysfunctional parents,” Megan said. “And this society. We abandon our kids. Everyone figures they survived their rough childhood, so these kids can too.”

  Rob felt his face heat. He’d said something similar to her earlier.

  “Yet, if you really think about it, imagine how you would’ve felt if someone had stepped in and helped you when you needed it.”

  “You can’t save the world, Meg,” Travers said softly.

  “Oh, really?” she said, putting her hands on her hips and whirring to face her brother.

  Her robe started to pull open. Rob would have liked that, but he knew it would create another familial scene, so he reached over and tightened her belt.

  She acknowledged him with a small nod.

  “It seems to me,” she said to her brother, “that this mission is all about saving the world. Because the world isn’t worth living in without love—”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Zoe said.

  “—and Zeus and everything he stands for is getting in the way of love. I have no idea why you people are balking at helping in any way you can.” Megan was shaking.

  Rob wanted to pull her close, but this time, he realized, he didn’t dare. She was very upset, and part of that upset was at him.

  “We did help,” Travers said.

  “Then you took a break for some nookie,” Megan said.

  “I’m not the only one.”

  “No,” Megan said, “nookie takes two.”

  “Oh, really?” Travers asked. “Is that a technical definition? Because I know you know that there are some things which can be done alone—”

  “You’re mean!” Megan said, obviously remembering an old slight.

  “And your bedroom always had thin walls.”

  “Not as thin as yours—”

  “And that,” Zoe said with finality, “is too much information for me. How about you, Rob?”

  Rob was actually enjoying this exchange. He would ask Megan about it later. “Well—”

  “Saving the world, remember?” Zoe said. “The prophecy that you don’t believe in. What was yours?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t recall much about a conversation I had hundreds of years ago.”

  “You forgot your prophecy?” Zoe asked.

  Megan frowned at both of them. “Is this important?’

  “It could be,” Zoe said. “The Fates always hand out a prophecy about each person after they’re born. Sometimes it has death information in it, sometimes it has other stuff, but it is always about how that person will find true love.”

  “Your prophecy told you about Travers?” Megan asked.

  “Yes, it did,” Zoe said.

  “Let it go, Zoe,” Rob said. “I promised I’d help with the wheel. Th
at’s enough.”

  “It’s not enough,” Zoe said. “What happens if your prophecy says you could die in Faerie?”

  “Then I’ll have to find a way to survive. The prophecies don’t always come true.”

  “You do remember yours,” Zoe said, eyeing him suspiciously.

  He shook his head. “I never let them tell me.”

  “Why not?” Travers asked.

  “Because,” Rob said. “Marian was already dead. I knew I had no chance at true love, so why hear a stupid prophecy about what had already happened?”

  Megan made a small squeak. Rob looked at her. Her face was pale, her eyes dark hollows against her skin.

  “I, um, need to get dressed,” Megan said, and hurried out of the room.

  “You’re a first-class idiot,” Zoe said, watching her leave.

  He knew that. He hadn’t meant to be so blunt.

  “You know that prophecy couldn’t have been about Marian if they wanted to tell you after she had already died,” Zoe continued.

  The bedroom door slammed shut. It took Rob a moment to focus on Zoe.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “The Fates,” she said. “They only give out prophecies of the future, not portents of the past. If they wanted to tell you after Marian died, then they thought you hadn’t met your true soulmate.”

  Two days ago, he would have yelled at her for that. But after this afternoon, he was beginning to realize there was a lot in this world he didn’t understand, either.

  “You think Megan is his soulmate?” Travers asked.

  “My people fall in love fast,” Zoe said. “Rob is hooked. I can tell.”

  “Well, you’ve got a way to go with Megan,” Travers said to Rob. “Because right now, you just fit into her classic pattern. You seduced her and hurt her. And I don’t care who you are. Hurt her any worse, and you’ll pay for the rest of your long and unnatural life.”

  Twenty-seven

  Megan leaned against the closed door and stared at the rumpled bed. The scene of the crime, as it were. Only it hadn’t been a crime.

  As she had so forcefully told her brother, she had consented. She hadn’t just consented, she had initiated. She had pulled off Rob’s clothing, brought him into this room, and jumped him.

  They hadn’t even pulled down the coverlet—something she always did in hotel rooms because who knew what other people did on top of those things?

  She winced.

  Other people probably just did what she and Rob had done.

  Her clothes were scattered around the room, and so were his. Some of his still had to be in the entry, but she hadn’t really noticed, not as she hurried in here — her stomach twisting and her eyes so dry that they hurt.

  Ironic that her eyes were dry now. The way her heart was feeling, she would have thought those eyes would be filled with tears.

  Yet, if she looked at things calmly and rationally, she had no reason to be upset. She knew about Marian. Hell, she had known about Maid Marian as Robin Hood’s Truest Love since she had been a little girl, reading books of legend and lore.

  She had known; she had always known.

  So why did it hurt?

  Because, for about two hours, she had felt cocooned in such a deep love that she actually believed it when a man who had known her for less than twenty-four hours had said that he had fallen in love with her.

  A man with an amazing and unusual accent and a deep, sexy voice had told her in no uncertain terms that he could love her, and then he had enumerated the reasons.

  A man who was the most attractive man she had ever met, a man who had decided that words weren’t enough and that he needed to use his body to convince her.

  She had been convinced.

  And then he had made it a lie.

  Although he had never said she was his soulmate. He hadn’t said she was his true love.

  All he had said was that he loved her.

  Which should have been enough.

  She sighed and grabbed her clothes. She tossed them on the bed—as far from the rumples as she could get—and dropped the robe. Time to come back to reality. Time to figure out what was really going on.

  What would she counsel her patients to do?

  Wait, that wasn’t fair. Kids often didn’t have life experience to make good choices. Both she and Rob had life experiences—he a few thousand more than she had.

  What would she counsel an adult?

  She would ask: What do you want in this relationship?

  And she would answer: I’m not sure it is a relationship.

  All right, she would say, do you want it to be a relationship?

  And her heart answered for her: Yes.

  Do you love him? she would ask.

  I don’t know.

  And she didn’t. That was the center of it. Because this had happened before. She had gotten overwhelmed by desire, desire that seemed to radiate from the man, desire that she would reciprocate—and then that desire would fade. Friendship or respect or a sense of fun might replace it. But that feeling, that warmth, would be gone for good.

  Only she had felt that strong, overwhelming sense of belonging when Rob had pulled her close in the middle of the discussion with Zoe and Travers. His desire had continued, and so had hers.

  But did she want more from him than sex?

  The sex was pretty good. (Pretty good? The sex was the most spectacular of her life. The sex would have been enough to sustain any relationship, for anyone, for as long as the sex worked.)

  Which was probably her answer.

  She wanted more, but would settle for the sex.

  And if some teenager had told her that, she would have said it was pretty pathetic.

  But she doubted any teenager would ever, ever experience sex like that.

  She smiled to herself and pulled on her clothes. Then she grabbed her brush from her overnight bag and straightened her hair.

  Rob was a complicated man. He claimed he wasn’t controlling, but he would make blanket statements, like when he had said that he didn’t want her to go with him.

  Yet he could be sensitive and caring.

  Was she in love with him?

  She didn’t know. She didn’t believe in love at first sight.

  But if she did believe in it, would she claim she was in love with him?

  Her heart warmed. From the moment she had seen him, she had been attracted to him. She hadn’t been able to get him out of her mind.

  And no other man would ever compare to him.

  Was that love?

  She didn’t know.

  Unlike Rob, she had never experienced it. She had no idea what it felt like.

  Was it this confusing?

  Her patients always said it was, and she believed them.

  Hell, she had experienced the confusion part herself.

  But never the all-enveloping warmth. Never the complete and total merging with another person. Never the certain knowledge that no other person would ever measure up to this one.

  She sighed.

  Her training had made her analytical. This was a question for her heart.

  And her heart was hiding, terrified of being hurt.

  Twenty-eight

  Megan wasn’t coming back.

  He had hurt her and he hadn’t meant to.

  “Excuse me,” Rob said, and headed toward the bedroom. Neither Zoe nor Travers tried to stop him, which told him that they agreed: He had screwed up.

  He stopped outside the bedroom door, half expecting sobs. The women from his past, with the exception of Marian, would have been wailing by now.

  But it was silent in there, except for a quiet rustling. What was she doing?

  He knocked.

  “Come on in, Rob,” she said.

  He opened the door. “You knew it was me?”

  She was fully dressed. Her lips still looked swollen from being kissed, but her hair was combed and her clothing was straightened.

  “Who else wo
uld it have been?” she asked. “Travers hates strong emotion, and I don’t know Zoe all that well.”

  “She’s a good person,” Rob said.

  “I’m beginning to figure that out,” Megan said. “Did she send you here?”

  It was a trick question, and fortunately, he’d had enough experience with women not to admit that Zoe had told him he was an idiot.

  “Coming after you was my idea.” He held out his hands in a what-was-I-thinking gesture. “I’m sorry.”

  Megan shrugged. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I overreacted. You’ve lived for centuries without me. To think that I’m the most important person you’ve ever met is arrogant, particularly since the whole world knows about Marian.”

  He sighed. She sounded so reasonable, and yet he worried that she wasn’t. “You are important.”

  “You told me that,” she said.

  Which wasn’t the answer he expected.

  “But do you believe it?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Oddly enough, I do. And if you’d asked me at noon yesterday would I have believed that people could come to mean so much to each other that they were as involved as longtime lovers, I’d say not outside a wartime situation.”

  “A wartime situation?”

  “You know, like being hostages together or being the only two survivors on a battlefield.”

  “Wow,” Rob said sarcastically, “you have a romantic view of love.”

  She smiled. “I was raised to be practical.”

  “But you’re not practical, Megan,” he said, “or you wouldn’t have spent time with me this afternoon.”

  She met his gaze. Her green eyes seemed clearer than they had before. “Oh, yes, I am. What I felt today is something I’ve never felt before—and I liked it. So I asked myself: Did I want to experience that again or ruin it by having the wrong expectations?”

  He frowned. He had never heard anything like this.

  “And I realized that I’d rather be with you as long as I can, and experience whatever it is that we have until we’re both tired of it, rather than letting John’s rather blanket statement about me being the best for you and all this talk of Fate and soulmates make me overreach the relationship.”

  “Overreach the relationship?” he repeated. He’d never heard anything like that.

  “This relationship is going to be what it’s going to be,” she said. “No amount of wishing can make it anything else.”