Totally Spellbound

by Kristine Grayson

  “All stories have a basis in reality,” Rob said.

  “I’m sure they do,” Megan said, not being sure at all, “but if you’re just repeating something you heard, then—”

  “I’m not risking you!” he snapped.

  “I’m not yours to risk,” she snapped back, and then gasped. The power behind those words had been his, not hers. It had been his fear coming through as anger, being reflected back at him through her.

  Although she believed that she controlled her own destiny.

  “What I mean is,” she said, “should I chose to risk my life, it’s my decision, not yours.”

  “And I have to live with it,” he said, once again deceptively calm.

  She nodded.

  He cursed, and she could feel real distress behind the word.

  “What?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Robin.”

  He closed his eyes. “I said the same thing to Marian. More than once.”

  “And yet she was the one who died,” Megan said.

  “Oh,” he said quietly, “but I left her first. And I did it by choice.”

  Thirty-three

  Fear. Fear was an amazingly powerful emotion, more powerful than love, if one let it be.

  Rob shook his head, and closed his eyes, so that he couldn’t see Megan. He had been so terrified of losing Marian that he had left her first, going off to fight in the Crusades, and then learning that no matter what he did, he couldn’t shake how he felt about her.

  Nor could he shake the fear.

  So he had gone home, only to find that she was angry with him, and the relationship had changed. They patched it up as best they could, but it was never exactly the same.

  And that had been his fault.

  “Robin?” Megan asked gently.

  He opened his eyes. She was studying him.

  “You know how I know you didn’t manipulate me?” she asked.

  He shook his head, wondering why she was telling him this now.

  “Because,” she said, “from the first moment I saw you, I’ve loved you, too.”

  He couldn’t respond at all—there were no words—so he didn’t say anything.

  “But what I’ve learned, in a life as a closet empath—” and then she smiled, amused, apparently, at her own choice of words— “is that even though emotions are powerful and can overwhelm you, the only thing that’ll save you is hanging onto yourself.”

  He wasn’t sure he understood that. His confusion must have shown on his face, for she crouched next to him and took his hand.

  “The only way I can love you,” she said as gently as he’d ever heard her speak, “is for there to be an ‘I’ in the first place.”

  She was right. He knew that. He had given up everything for Marian after he had come back, and it hadn’t made things better. They were all right, but they had never achieved that passion and perfection of the early years.

  “You want to go to Faerie, don’t you?” he asked.

  “If I can distract them so that you can steal the wheel, why not? It doesn’t sound like I’ll die.”

  “But you could get trapped there,” he said.

  She smiled at him. “I’m in love with Robin Hood, and wasn’t it said of him that no walls could hold him? No prison could keep him out?”

  “Of me, yes,” he said. “But not of the people around me.”

  “Didn’t you rescue everyone who’d been captured?” she asked.

  “When I was young,” he said.

  “Did anyone get captured when you were older?”

  “No,” he said, “but I’d gone up against mere mortals. Faeries are powerful.”

  “And yet my newbie brother defeated them,” Megan said.

  “He escaped them,” Rob said. “That’s a different thing.”

  She shook her head. “It seems to me escape is all we’re discussing. And I believe it’s completely possible.”

  She did believe it, he could see it in her eyes. She believed it with all the naïveté of a new mage. And yet, she had an argument.

  And he was reacting out of fear.

  “Can I be part of your plan to get the wheel?” she asked quietly.

  His heart—his fearful, newly reopened heart—trembled as he said, ever so softly, “Yes.”

  Thirty-four

  It felt like the old days. Rob was at the top of his game. John liked the plan. Everyone had a part, even the kid.

  John stood still while Zoe put the finishing touches on his disguise. Apparently no one could enter Faerie looking like a civilian—the Faeries would encircle them, use their magic against them, and steal whatever luck they had.

  Invisibility spells didn’t work either, because the Faeries could track them. Sometimes they let mages with invisibility spells go very deep into Faerie before trapping them there and making them lose years.

  Some, Zoe said, lost their lives.

  Although John hadn’t heard of it. He stood in the middle of the giant bathroom at the back of Travers’ suite. Travers sat on the edge of the bathtub watching the entire procedure. Rob peered into the mirror, looking at his newly blackened hair, his upswept eyebrows, high cheekbones, and brand-new pointed ears.

  “It looks weird,” he said. “They’ll see right through it.”

  “They didn’t see through me,” Travers said. “But a Faerie actually did mine.”

  He’d been done up to look like a Faerie in order to rescue Zoe. She had put him right just that morning, which he reminded her as they all headed toward the bathroom.

  “If we could find Gaylord,” Zoe said, “then we’d use him. But I think he heard that I was rescued and went off on his own again. He does that.”

  “You’re doing fine,” John said through clenched lips. It actually hurt to have her do this magic on him. His face was stretching, and his bones creaking.

  She had insisted on doing the magic because she’d been around Faerie her whole life (apparently, from what Travers said, her prophecy had been about Faerie), and because she thought that John and Robin wouldn’t “go the distance.”

  She didn’t explain that, but John knew what she meant. There was a certain delicacy to all Faeries that he didn’t have—he was more the linebacker, break-a-few-heads type—and for this to work, he had to willow-out a little.

  Zoe couldn’t change his mass, but she was moving it around some. He was actually going to get taller and thinner, which was initially what he wanted (that Atkins diet), but not like this.

  Apparently, there were no fat Faeries. John tried to think of a counter example and couldn’t come up with any.

  Not that he was fat. He was large, big-boned, and strong. Fat never figured into it.

  Except when he stood on his own scale, and realized how much weight he’d put on since he’d been a young man.

  Of course, food was more widely available now than it had been in the twelfth century.

  “Don’t smile,” Zoe said, still working on his cheekbones. This took a delicate magic, the kind that was almost like sculpting.

  Rob looked oddly like some of the paintings made of him centuries ago. Put him in green and add a feather in his cap, and he’d look a little like Errol Flynn—and John hadn’t seen any resemblance before now.

  “I’m still not sure I should go back in,” Travers said forlornly. “I’d be happier if I stayed up here.”

  “I’m lousy at math,” Rob said, “and John’s only slightly better.”

  “Who does the books for your corporations?” Travers asked.

  “A series of accountants, who never see all of the books. It’s a checks and balances thing,” Rob said, “since I really can’t oversee it well.”

  “Sounds like a major handicap,” Travers said.

  “I’ve coped for a long time.” He shrugged, turned around, and rested his hands on the counter, peering at John. “You look more like an oversized leprechaun.”

  “Faith and begorrah to you too,” John gr
umped.

  “Stop moving,” Zoe said. “I’m almost done.”

  “The three of us have to go in,” Rob said. “I need you to get us to that wheel as quickly as possible. John and I’ll get it out, but again, you have to lead.”

  Travers sighed. “Leaving Zoe to guard the Fates.”

  “I’m not guarding anyone,” Zoe said. “They’re going to help me monitor.”

  “Which I don’t entirely understand,” Travers said.

  “Done.” Zoe took her hands off John’s face. It still ached, but not as badly. He looked at himself in the mirror. He looked a lot more like the Jolly Green Giant than an oversized leprechaun, but he wasn’t sure that was an improvement.

  “You don’t have to understand,” he said to Travers. “Rob’s in charge. He never tells us the entire plan.”

  “Great.” Travers muttered.

  Zoe smiled fondly at him. “Come up here,” she said and pointed to the chair that John was just vacating.

  John went and sat by Rob. “Aren’t we a pair?” Rob asked. “I’d rather wear green and smear mud on my face than do this.”

  “It’s the same idea,” John said, hearing his jaw crack as he spoke. This was going to be a painful few hours.

  “I suppose,” Rob said.

  “It’s the team that worries me too,” John said. “Zoe doesn’t have enough firepower if we all get trapped.”

  “But she has the Fates,” Rob said. “They know some magic tricks that we don’t.”

  “And don’t, at the moment, have the skill to execute them.”

  “It’ll work,” Rob said, but he looked worried too, and John knew why. Megan had talked him into letting her be involved. The Fates thought that was a good idea—that was why, they said, the adventure was happening now, because of Megan.

  But Rob didn’t want to put her at risk.

  All of them would be at some kind of risk. John wasn’t really sure what the Faeries could do to him, besides steal some of his magic and make him lose a few decades but he also knew he didn’t want to find out.

  “Yeouch!” Travers said. “It didn’t hurt when Gaylord did it.”

  Zoe shrugged. “He’s had more practice, I’m sure.”

  “Smuggling people into Faerie? I don’t think so.”

  John rubbed his hands over his weirdly shaped face. “How long do you think this’ll take us?” he asked Rob softly.

  “Too long,” Rob said. “That’s my biggest worry—that it’ll take much too long.”

  Thirty-five

  Megan sat nervously in her car, staring at the luminous dial on her watch. Seconds sure took a long time to pass when she tracked each and every one of them.

  She was three parking lots away from her target, an unnamed casino on the Boulder Highway. She had driven by the place just to make sure she was in the right area, and, judging by the description Zoe had given her, she was.

  Apparently the ancient casino with the neon sign that said Craps, Slots and Beer was the Faeries’ main casino in Vegas. Megan found that hard to believe, particularly with all the fancy casinos around, but Zoe insisted.

  In fact, she said there was an entrance to Faerie inside.

  She also said Megan would have to work hard to ignore it.

  Megan was working hard to ignore a lot of things, mostly the feeling that she probably should have listened to Rob. He had been afraid for her because of abilities she hadn’t completely understood. He had also been afraid for her because she was getting in over her head.

  And it wasn’t until she saw that run-down casino with the ratty cars in its parking lot, that she sensed he wasn’t overreacting.

  Still, she had Kyle on her side. Kyle, and Zoe, and the Fates. Apparently they had set up some kind of command system. Zoe had enhanced Kyle’s mind-reading ability to pick up any signal from Megan, although she had to be really specific about it. They had given her instructions—all five of them had (well, the Fates probably counted as one person in this case, since their instructions were broken down into parts)—and had made her repeat those instructions back to them.

  She had even practiced a little. Enough that Kyle frowned at her and said, “I heard you, Aunt Meg.”

  A little bit of petty revenge for that moment in Rob’s office, where Kyle had broadcast to her.

  Still, she was very much on her own, and she had been instructed not to panic when the Faeries noticed her. The only time she really needed to call for help was if they tried to take her to Faerie or if she felt physically threatened.

  Otherwise, she was to wait until someone came to get her or until dawn, whichever was sooner. No one had quite figured out how she would know when dawn was from the inside of the Faerie casino, so they tried one small trick.

  They magicked her watch, protecting it from the Faerie time manipulation. The Fates believed the magic was too small for the Faeries to notice, and Zoe believed Megan could explain it all by simply saying she had purchased the watch at an odds ’n ends store in North Vegas. Apparently, a place there did sell magical items to the non-magical. The Faeries often stashed things there so that they could trace particular marks.

  Finally the hands on her magicked watch showed 9 p.m. She started the car and drove out of the parking lot, heading down the street to the Faerie casino.

  Her stomach clenched.

  Zoe had tried to explain this to her: that the Faeries had had casinos here since Vegas was founded. Time was irrelevant to them (although the Fates argued that it simply moved differently for them) so they didn’t notice that their place was out of date.

  Zoe actually believed that the Faeries kept the casino out of date on purpose, to capture the gambling addicts and the long-timers, not to attract tourists. The Faeries were pure businessmen through and through, according to the Fates, and maybe part of a mob, according to Zoe.

  All Megan learned was that she had to watch her own back.

  With people who had more magic than she could imagine, and had (according to Rob) no emotions at all.

  But if that were true, how had one of them become friends with Zoe? Was she that inattentive to the niceties of emotion? Was that why she’d been attracted to Travers?

  (Which wasn’t really fair on Megan’s part. Travers had emotions—a lot of them—but he usually tamped them down. Although he wasn’t doing that much this week.)

  She made herself take several deep breaths. She drove past several darkened buildings—most of them closed- down casinos, getting ready for demolition. Zoe had mentioned that this area was the next one up for renovation, and Megan could see why.

  This far out on the old highway to Boulder City, ghosts of the past remained. Old eateries, warehouses, and empty lots where important places once stood brought back a time when this was one of the main drags of the Vegas area.

  Now it felt creepy and deserted, the kind of place she wouldn’t go alone in her own town of L.A., let alone here.

  But she couldn’t abandon the mission; she was the distraction. Although she wasn’t sure how just walking into a casino, even one run by Faeries, would make a big enough distraction so that the men could steal the spinning wheel.

  They all assured her it would work.

  So she was going to try it, even though she was more nervous than she had ever been in her life.

  She pulled into the parking lot of the casino. The Es on the Craps, Slots and Beer sign were starting to go out. The neon crackled and faded in and out, sending weird red light across this part of the parking lot.

  For the life of her, she couldn’t see any other sign—not even one that used to say the name of the casino. She had hoped to prove Zoe wrong about that, but there was nothing.

  Beer cans and old cigarette wrappers littered the parking lot. The front page of the Las Vegas Sun blew across the concrete, even though she didn’t feel much of a wind.

  The air smelled faintly of smoke and stale beer. If it was this bad out here, how bad would it be inside?

  She hurried acro
ss the cracked sidewalk and pulled open the double glass doors—no name on those either. The place was just as dark inside as it was out. In fact, the level of light seemed about the same—red and blue and yellow neon, coming from slot machines so old they looked like they belonged in a 1950s movie.

  The air smelled so strongly of cigarette smoke, she had a hunch it would take fifteen showers over five days to get the stench off her skin just from this momentary contact. Everyone inside the casino—all of whom looked “mortal” to her—was smoking, from the elderly man who sat at the corner slot machine to the woman beside him who had an oxygen tank on wheels and breathing tubes in her nose.

  Megan resisted the urge to cough. So far, no one had noticed her. She had thought she’d be rushed by Faeries. But she hadn’t seen a one.

  Was that a bad sign?

  She wished she had someone to ask.

  The low ceilings held the smoke down and made the ka-ching! ka-ching! of the coins falling into the metal trays seem even louder. The slot machines here were truly one armed bandits, with the lever that the gambler had to pull. A few of the gamblers looked like they’d been attached to the machines in 1966 and were being kept alive by the same electricity that kept the machines going.

  Megan kept walking. Her breath was coming in short gasps, but she couldn’t tell if that was from the smoke or from her nervousness. She was glad that Faeries didn’t have empaths—someone like her would be able to sense her fear from miles away.

  She passed craps tables that were mostly empty except for a croupier and two other employees all watching one or two players. In a room to the side, ten people played poker, and judging by the stack of chips that each had in front of them, the game had been going on forever, with no end in sight.

  Megan swallowed, feeling nerves churn her stomach. She followed her wounded nose to the buffet, where a beef roast looked like it had been glued to the tray five weeks before. Next to it, a congealed white gravy mound pretended to be some kind of chicken, and beside that, pork so dried that it could have served as shoe leather rounded out the “meat” portion of the serving area.