Absolutely Captivated

Absolutely
Captivated

Kristine Grayson

Other Books By Kristine
Grayson

Utterly Charming

Thoroughly Kissed

Completely
Smitten

Simply
Irresistible

Absolutely
Captivated

Totally
Spellbound

Wickedly Charming

Copyright Information

Absolutely
Captivated

Copyright © 2012 by
Kristine Kathryn Rusch

First published by Zebra
Books, 2004

Published by WMG
Publishing

Cover and Layout copyright
© 2012 by WMG Publishing

Cover design by Allyson
Longueira/WMG Publishing

Cover art copyright ©
Sergey Denisov/Dreamstime, Svetap/Dreamstime

Smashwords Edition

This book is licensed for
your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction.
All characters and events portrayed in this book are
fictional,
and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely
coincidental.

This book, or parts
thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without
permission.

For KW and Geri Jeter

Many thanks go to my husband for his
support on these books, and his willingness to live with someone
who names her cats as oddly as the familiars in these
novels.

Table of Contents

Absolutely
Captivated

Copyright
Information

About the Author

Zoe Sinclair carried three overflowing
beer steins toward the darkened corner of the bar, ignoring the
catcalls and cries of “Hey, Baby, bring ‘em over here!” coming from
the men at tables around the room. The calls came in perfect
counterpoint to the beep-beep of the video poker machines lined up
against the wall by the door. The cigarette smoke was thick and
blue in the low-ceilinged room, and Zoe wouldn’t have it any other
way.

She was emphatically not a
waitress—never had been, never would be, no matter how tight her
money got—but she had perfected the three-stein carry in the
nineteenth century, when she spent way too much time in German beer
gardens, trying to find a secret doorway to Faerie that she’d heard
about in Munich. She never found that German doorway, but she had
come away with some practical skills, most of them having to do
with beer.

O’Hasie’s Pub was crowded tonight,
which meant that one of the downtown casinos was hosting a major
poker tournament. O’Hasie’s was on the wrong side of Fremont
Street, as far from the Fremont Street Experience as a walker could
get.

O’Hasie’s catered mainly
to the locals, but during major downtown tournaments, the poker
players—usually the losing ones—made their way through the drug
dealers and hookers who found refuge in this last unDisneyfied
section of Vegas, and stopped at O’Hasie’s for some
refreshment.

If Zoe had remembered that this was
the big event, she would have suggested a different bar. But there
were so many casinos in Las Vegas now, each with its own round of
tournaments and concerts and special events, that she couldn’t keep
track of any of them.

Whenever Zoe went to a tourist venue,
she wore the traditional costume of the traveling American: blue
jeans, logo t-shirt, and sneakers. What she usually liked about
O’Hasie’s was that no tourists ventured close to it (except during
major tournaments), and she could dress however she
pleased.

Tonight she wore a black skirt with a
slit along the side, and a see-through blouse over a black t-shirt.
She topped it all with a small black fedora on her chin-length
black hair. Certainly not camouflage clothes. The tourists looked
at her as if she were a member of Vegas’s exotic
nightlife.

Zoe managed to make it all
the way to the back without spilling a drop—not a mean trick,
considering how wobbly her stiletto heels were on the pilled
carpet. She skirted around two bulky women in green Fitzgerald’s
t-shirts, and headed for the booth next to the
restrooms.

The booth had the benefit of privacy.
It had tall sides made of the original mahogany wood that had once
graced O’Hasie’s. In the many remodels this bar had undergone since
1955, the mahogany mostly disappeared, except in a few surprising
places—this booth, the corridor leading to the restrooms, and an
old-fashioned glass-doored phone cubicle just past the men’s room
door.

A small red-shaded lamp glued to the
wall above the table gave the booth an even greater air of privacy.
From the bar, the patrons sitting in the booth were impossible to
see.

But as she stepped across
a rip in the carpet that had been there since 1983, the booth came
into view. Its red upholstery looked particularly seedy, and the
plastic oak-veneer tabletop, which someone had replaced the old
wooden tables with four decades ago, had dried water stains that
looked orange in the weird light.

Her friends, Herschel and Gaylord,
were using two straws to slap a wadded-up straw wrapper back and
forth as if it were a hockey puck. They were bent across the table,
the game obviously serious, as games always were with the two of
them.

They looked enough alike to be
brothers, even though they weren’t. They both had thick black hair,
slightly pointed ears, and slender forms that they tried to hide
under heavy leather jackets covered with lots of chains and metal.
Lately Herschel had tried to toughen up his pretty face with
piercings, but the studs in his nose emphasized its small, perfect
shape, and the rings in the eyebrows only served to accent their
upswept arch, which made them look like wings. Nothing these two
guys could do—not even Gaylord’s bruised right eye—could make take
away from their unearthly beauty.

Zoe set the steins down,
then slid one to Herschel and the other to Gaylord. She took the
third stein for herself and sat down next to Herschel, adjusting
her skirt so that the slit didn’t show quite as much thigh to the
drunk and disappointed poker players.

“You screwed up the arena,” Gaylord
said, raising his straw as if it were a lance. “You got water all
over the playing surface.”

Zoe picked up the
crumpled wrapper, rolled it into a perfect ball between her
manicured fingertips, and then tossed it into the wastebasket
halfway across the room. She hit the basket, but didn’t
shout
Two points!
like she normally would have.

Instead, she leaned back in the booth
and said, “We’ve had enough table hockey for the night.”

“You know, Zo,” Herschel said, tugging
on a ring at the corner of his delicate mouth, “there are times you
are no fun at all.”

Zoe sipped the foam on her
beer, wishing that this bar had something more exotic than Heineken
on tap. “I’ve got two divorces, one insurance fraud case, and one
missing dachshund to find, so if you two—”

“Missing dachshund?”
Gaylord giggled. The sound was high-pitched and infectious, and
caught the attention of the poker players at a nearby table. They
looked at Gaylord in shock, probably trying to decide how old he
was. When Gaylord giggled like that, he sounded like he was
three.

“Zo,” Gaylord said, “you’re better
than finding missing dogs.”

“It’s my job,” Zoe said. “I take the
work that interests me.”

“Since when did you become a pet
detective?” Herschel asked.

Zoe felt a thread of irritation.
“Since the client came to my office. Which is where I’m going to go
if you two don’t tell me why I’m here.”

“Zo, Zo, Zo,” Gaylord said. “You
should get your money the old-fashioned way. You should conjure
it.”

He clapped his hands
together and stacks of neatly wrapped hundred-dollar bills littered
the tabletop.

“I don’t do that,” Zoe said. “You know
that.”

She believed in earning her way
through hard work, not magic. Besides, she was a mage, subject to
the judgment of the Fates, and the rule of the Powers That Be.
Herschel and Gaylord were Faeries, who lived under different rules.
The Faerie Kings—the Faerie equivalent of the Fates—didn’t seem to
mind a lot of magic use, where the Fates punished mages for using
too much.

Gaylord picked up a stack of bills and
waved it under Zoe’s nose. The stack smelled faintly of clover.
“C’mon, Zo,” he said. “Live a little. Party up, girl. You work too
hard.”

Zoe slapped the money away. “I don’t
cheat people.”

“This isn’t cheating,” Gaylord said.
“People are always so happy to get cash.”

“It’s Faerie money,” she whispered.
“It’ll fade away in twenty-four hours.”

“Long after you’re gone, sweetheart,”
Gaylord said. “The humans’ll just think they’ve lost it or spent it
or counted it wrong when they were drunk.”

Zoe crossed her arms. The poker
players from the next table were watching, their eyes
big.

“Get it out of here,” she said very
quietly, “or I’m leaving.”

“By the solstice, Zo,” Herschel
snapped, “when did you get to be such a pain?”

Zoe gave him a cold smile. “I always
have been, Hersch. I just usually pain in your favor.”

Herschel tugged harder on the ring on
the side of his mouth. “You make it sound like I take sides. I
don’t. Usually.”

“Neither do I,” said Zoe. “Now get rid
of this stuff.”

“If you promise to stop using real
names,” Herschel said. “You’re making me nervous.”

She had intended to make
him nervous. The real name of a magical person—be he Faerie or
mage—had a lot of power. With the right spell, someone magical
could control another magical person, just by using their real
name.

“Well,” Zoe said, nodding
toward the Faerie money, “you’re making me nervous, not to mention
attracting a lot of attention.”

Gaylord cursed in Gaelic which, from
his accent, was not his native language. He clapped his hands
together, and the money disappeared.

Zoe stretched one long leg toward the
seat on the other side of the booth, then crossed the other leg
over it. The slit in her skirt fell open, revealing a lot of
skin.

She hoped the poker players noticed,
so that they didn’t search for the missing cash.

“You boys called me,” she said softly.
“Tell me what’s going on or I’m taking your beers back to the
bar.”

Both Herschel and Gaylord grabbed
their steins as if she had already tried to take them. She had
taken their drinks away before. She felt she had that
right.

She always bought when the
three of them met because she didn’t want to risk her reputation
around town. Contrary to what Gaylord said, mortals did remember
who gave them Faerie money. And even though they might not
understand what happened, and eventually come to think of it as
some kind of cheap parlor trick, they did resent it.

“Word on the street, Zo, is that the
magic is gathering around you,” Gaylord said.

“Which street?” Zoe asked. “Are we
talking about the Strip or that avenue in Faerie you boys coated
with pyrite?”

Herschel rolled his eyes. “It’s not
fool’s gold, love. It’s pixie dust, and you know we weren’t
supposed to tell you about that.”

“I don’t remember ever telling her
about that,” Gaylord said, giving Herschel a sideways look. “Did
you?”

“We had to,” Herschel said. “Zoe’s
never going to Faerie, are you, Zo?”

Zoe didn’t answer that, at least not
directly. She was afraid of Faerie. The prophecy that each mage got
when her magical career started warned Zoe against Faerie, while
promising her great rewards if she lived near it.