Absolutely Captivated (13 page)

“Hormones aren’t an issue for us,”
said Crystal.

“Like we ever get out of here to
hormone over anyone anyway,” said Tiffany.

“Then who is Dudley?” Zoe
asked.

Crystal’s face turned as red as her
hair.

“He’s such a dweeb,” said
Brittany.

“Is not,” said Crystal.

“Is too,” said Tiffany.

“Look,” said Morton, “I already lived
through this argument once which, I gotta tell you, was one time
too many. Can we move on to important things like you sending me
back to the Sands?”

“The Sands was torn down,” Zoe
said.

“That’s the name of the new nightclub
I’m headlining, baby,” Morton said with a wink.

“Have you told these
girls—Fates—Interim Fates—what you’re doing?” Zoe asked. As if the
girls would care.

“He already told us enough stuff,”
said Brittany.

“Yeah, we got at least two new rules
to look up,” said Crystal.

“And they never do the
looking up. I do.” Tiffany pulled on a single cornrow and chewed
the end. “I’m beginning to think they can’t read.”

“We can read,” Brittany
said.

“We just don’t like to,” said
Crystal.

“Hey!” Morton said, “Can
we stop the bickering and get back to sending me home?”

Zoe glared at him.
Then she glared at the girls. How selfish
were
these people? “Would one of you
get the dog some water?” she asked.

“He’ll just pee again,” Tiffany
said.

“Yeah, that’s just plain gross,” said
Brittany.

“Well,” said Zoe, trying to keep her
temper in check. It wouldn’t do to get mad at these girls if they
had Zeus’s power behind them, “you could have let him outside or
cleaned up after him.”

“Ew,” said Crystal. “We don’t
clean.”

“That’s obvious,” said Zoe and Morton
in unison. They looked at each other. Morton looked as appalled as
Zoe felt.

“Maybe it’s time you start,” Zoe
said.

“Um, like, no,” said
Brittany.

“A simple snap of the fingers would
do,” Zoe said.

“We don’t waste our magic that way,”
said Crystal.

“Besides, the non-magical need some
kind of purpose,” said Tiffany.

“You have non-magical
people clean up after you?” Zoe asked, unable to hide her shock. It
was against the rules to enslave or employ the non-magical in roles
that made them clean up after the magical.

All three girls blushed.

“Not here,” said Brittany. “At
home.”

“In your father’s house,” Zoe
said.

Crystal nodded. “It’s much cleaner
there.”

“Figures,” Zoe said.

“We keep waiting for someone to show
up here, but no one has,” Tiffany said.

“But you’re the acting Fates,” Zoe
said.

“Interim,” Brittany said.

“Couldn’t you just get someone to
clean up?” Zoe asked.

“What a great idea!” Crystal looked at
the other two girls. “Isn’t that a great idea?”

“Maybe the next person who comes in
wanting rules should just clean the place,” Tiffany
said.

“Or look up the rule.” Brittany
clapped her hands together.

“Excuse me,” Zoe said. “But the
dog?”

“Oh, ick,” Crystal said.

“Like anyone cares about the damn
dog,” Tiffany said.

The dachshund whined.

“What did you want us to do about
him?” Brittany asked.

Zoe snapped her fingers and a water
bowl appeared in front of the dachshund. His tail thumped once in
appreciation, then he stood and drank.

“If he pees, you’re cleaning up this
place,” Crystal said.

“I don’t think so,” Zoe
said.

“We’ll call our dad,” Tiffany
said.

That was a real threat, but Zoe didn’t
let the girls see that it intimidated her.

“I think your dad is probably real
tired of you girls asking him for help.” Zoe was guessing, but from
the way the girls flinched, she knew her guess was right. “So you
all should leave me alone, and concentrate on what you’re supposed
to do.

“What’re we supposed to do again?”
Brittany asked.

“You’re supposed to make all sorts of
rules and decisions and legal judgments,” Zoe said. “In this case,
you’re making a decision about a dissatisfied familiar.”

And as she said that, she finally
understood why she hadn’t been able to find a new familiar. Her
lovely Seraphina, a cat, had died three weeks ago. Zoe had a
substitute familiar, on loan from a friend, but she hadn’t found
her regular familiar yet.

“You do know that you’re all in charge
of familiars, don’t you?” Zoe asked.

“No.” Crystal pulled at
the gum out of her mouth in a long, pink string which she proceeded
to wrap around her little finger.

“Does that mean all cats
and dogs or is it other stuff, too?” Tiffany asked.

“I thought only people with no talent
had familiars,” Brittany said.

“Oh, jeez.” Morton put his hands in
his thinning hair. “I’m getting queasy.”

So was Zoe. And her foot was beginning
to stick to her shoe. The dachshund kept drinking, as if he had
been about to die of dehydration.

“Everyone has a familiar,” Zoe said.
“Or should. Our magic doesn’t work right if we don’t have
one.”

“We don’t have one,” Crystal
said.

“We don’t need one,” Tiffany
said.

“Yeah,” Morton said, “like I don’t
need a new head of hair.”

“Shut up, Vegas Boy,” Brittany said,
pointing her finger at him. “We have the power to make you
completely hairless.”

“Give me a
real
threat, baby,”
Morton said.

The girls raised their hands, and Zoe
stepped between them and Morton, although she wasn’t sure
why.

“The problem here,” Zoe said, “isn’t
Morton’s baldness or the fact that you girls lack
familiars.”

Although that probably was a major
part of the problem. Zoe silently cursed Zeus, and wished she had
never come here.

“The problem is,” Zoe continued, “that
Bartholomew here—”

“There ain’t no Bartholomew here,”
Crystal said.

“It’s the dumb dog,” Tiffany
whispered.

“Oh,” Brittany said.

“—
Bartholomew and Morton
aren’t really a good match,” Zoe said, pretending she hadn’t heard
the interchange. “Bartholomew’s not happy and he’s acting out, as
you can tell from the um—urine—in the other room. He ran away how
many times in the past month, Morton?”

Morton bowed his head.
“Five.”

“And that’s the sign of an unhappy
dog,” Zoe said. “Which makes for bad magic.”

“My magic is fine,” Morton
said.

“Maybe at the moment,” Zoe said. “But
I think you should give Morton a familiar that he deserves, and let
Bartholomew come with me. I’ll find him a new home. How’s that for
solving your problem?”

The girls brightened.

“You’ll take the smelly dog?” Crystal
asked, shoving her gum back in her mouth.

Bartholomew whined and lay
down again. Zoe could almost feel his thoughts. He didn’t think he
was smelly.

Although she had had the same thought
about him not two hours ago.

“I’ll take the dog,” Zoe
said.

“And what should we do with this guy
here?” Tiffany asked.

Take his magic away,
assign him to a hundred years of making change for folks sitting at
slot machines, and make sure he never, ever gets a full head of
hair,
Zoe thought but didn’t say. Instead,
she said, “That’s your decision.”

“You said a familiar he deserves,
though,” Brittany said. All three girls were leaning forward as if
Zoe had the answers to a particularly hard test on the day before
the test was scheduled.

“Yeah,” Crystal said. “What’d you mean
by that?”

Caught. Zoe gave Morton a sideways
look.

He raised his hands. “Hey,” he said.
“I paid you. I sent you out looking for the dog, and you brought
him back.”

“Three times,” Zoe said. “Four was too
many. I had to ask him why he wanted to leave.”

“He just don’t like Vegas,” Morton
said. “He’ll get over it.”

“He doesn’t like the way you treat
mortals,” Zoe said. “And he thinks you’re misusing your magic,
which he’s afraid he’ll have to pay for.”

The dog whined again, almost as if he
were telling her to shut up.

“Although I doubt in this climate that
that’s an issue,” Zoe added.

“What does
that
mean?” Tiffany
asked.

“You’re a bright girl,” Zoe said. “You
figure it out.”

“Do you know how many cases we’re
behind?” Brittany asked.

“How many rules there are to learn?”
Crystal said.

“How many people want answers now,
now, now?” Tiffany asked.

“It’d be better if you just tell us
what to do with the familiars,” Brittany said.

“Well—” Morton started, but Zoe
interrupted him.

“You should give Morton a new
familiar. Let me take Bartholomew, and then you should start
researching familiar laws, because you are way behind on your
duties in that area,” Zoe said.

“How do you know?” Crystal
asked.

“Because I lost my familiar a month
ago,” Zoe said, feeling a pang, “and I haven’t been able to find
one. Now I know why.”

“Why?” Tiffany asked.

“Because, you little
brainless moron,” Morton snapped, “you’re supposed to provide new
familiars to people who lose theirs.”

The room was quiet. Zoe had to work to
keep a smile off her face. All three girls stared at Morton, and
for the first time, they looked menacing. Bartholomew slunk as far
under the table as he could go.

“What can be a familiar?” Brittany
asked Zoe.

“Anything so long as it’s alive,” Zoe
said. “A snake, a bumblebee, a rat.”

“A dog,” Morton said.

“That dog don’t like you,” Crystal
said.

“So it can’t be a dog,” Tiffany
said.

Zoe wasn’t sure she wanted to see how
this worked out. “Would you mind if I took Bartholomew?”

“For you?” Brittany asked.

“Um, no,” Zoe said, not sure she could
stand the dog either. “I’m sure I’ll find someone.”

“Okay,” Crystal said.

“You know,” Tiffany said, still
looking at Morton. “Maybe a gerbil’d be nice.”

“Gerbils don’t have a lot of power,”
Morton said.

“So?” Brittany asked.

Zoe crouched, opened her arms, and
beckoned Bartholomew toward her.

“I’d like to keep my dog,” said
Morton.

“Well, you big brainless moron,”
Crystal said, “that ain’t gonna happen.”

You go
girl
, Zoe thought.

Bartholomew crawled toward her on his
stomach. When he reached her, he whined again. He really was
smelly. Sausages and urine and a bit of garbage, plus doggy sweat.
Poor thing. He just needed someone to love him.

“Maybe a spider,” said
Tiffany.

“Yeah,” said Brittany, “one of those
little ugly ones.”

“I’m an arachnophobe,” Morton said.
“Can we think of something else?”

Zoe silently recited a spell to take
her and Bartholomew back to the office.

“An arachnophobe?” Crystal asked.
“What’s that?’

“He’s afraid of spiders,” Tiffany
said.

All three girls laughed. It was a
terrifying sound.

The dog shivered, and Zoe finished the
spell. They both disappeared.

Only to materialize in her office—in
the middle of a mountain of money.

Travers hadn’t meant to do
it, and he still wasn’t sure how he had. Atropos had asked him to
think of a five-dollar bill, and the next thing he knew, he was
holding one. He assumed the Fates had shoved one in his hand, but
he hadn’t seen them do it.

Then Clotho asked him to
think of a thousand five-dollar bills, and the desk got covered
with them. Then the Fates wanted him to think of a million
five-dollar bills, and a mountain of money appeared on the
floor.

Kyle squealed and dove in it as if it
were a pile of leaves. The Fates were watching Travers with
glittering eyes, and then Zoe reappeared right in the middle of the
money mountain.

Holding an obese dachshund
that smelled of grease, urine, and overripe bananas.