Absolutely Captivated (35 page)

But she knew she couldn’t do that, any
more than she could leave that man standing in the front of Elmer’s
store. She felt for Travers.

She only hoped that, while he was
waiting, he kept his thoughts and his fingers under
control.

By the time they’d finished lunch,
Kyle’s stomach felt as solid as a basketball. He had put a
hamburger and fries on top of all three milkshakes, and he was
already paying for it.

Except for
Star Trek: The Experience
, the day was pretty much a bust. Kyle was sunburned and
nauseous, jittery and frightened, and worried about those three
guys, who still appeared at the oddest times.

Since he got in the neighborhood of
his hotel, though, he hadn’t seen them. The Fates flanked him,
talking happily about their rides, the water park, and the
Rainforest Café where they’d coaxed him into that last bit of
food.

He had known better than to eat when
he was already stuffed. Now he felt like that guy in the Monty
Python movie his dad had yelled at him for watching—the really fat
guy who ate one last thing: a wafer-thin mint.

The very thought of a wafer-thin mint
made Kyle’s stomach turn over, and the act of it turning over made
it turn over again. He put a hand on the small basketball he was
growing there, and hurried along the block.

The Fates had to struggle to keep
up.

Kyle glanced over his shoulder. No
three guys. They had shown up in the Rainforest Café just as he and
the Fates were leaving. They were sitting underneath a giant tree
branch, studying the bright green fake frog on the table beside
them.

As far as Kyle could tell, the men
didn’t see them leave.

Still, he glanced around before
slipping into his hotel’s lobby. No Vulcan men, no strangers. Only
tourists on the street who looked like normal people.

Of course, he and his dad
looked like normal people, and they were about as strange as it
got.

“I do think we should change clothes
and go to one of the casinos,” Clotho said. She slipped her hand on
Kyle’s back, making his sunburn sting.

He pretended it didn’t
hurt.

“I would love to crap,” Lachesis
said.

“Play craps,” Atropos said.

“Is that the proper way to say it?”
Clotho asked Kyle.

“I don’t even know what it is.” He
sounded as grumpy as he felt. Maybe just a little less. If he
sounded as grumpy as he felt, he would be yelling at
them.

“It’s a game of cards,” Lachesis
said.

“Dice,” Atropos said.

“It’s gambling though, right?” Kyle
asked.

All three Fates nodded.

“I can’t go with you if you do that,
and my dad’ll be really mad at me for letting you go alone.”
Especially if he gave them any of the money he carried in his
wallet. The Fates didn’t understand money, and they didn’t
understand games, and they certainly didn’t understand
gambling.

Kyle hurried them along the lobby,
filled with mirrors and video poker machines, and onto the
elevators. He wanted nothing more than a cool shower, and a long
nap.

The elevators were large and mirrored
as well. Kyle saw himself in the reflecting glass as he stepped on
board. He had gone past lobster an hour ago. Now he was fire engine
red. His dad would be so furious with him. Sunburn avoidance was
like topic number one between the two of them in the summer—the
fate of natural blonds in California, his dad liked to
say.

Only they weren’t in California. They
were in Nevada, and even though Kyle was happy to miss school, he
really wanted to go home.

“Who’re those guys?” he blurted as the
elevator doors closed, narrowly missing Atropos’s foot.

“What guys?” Clotho asked, but she
didn’t sound innocent. She was clearly pretending not to know
exactly what he was talking about.

“Those three Vulcans who were
following us everywhere,” Kyle said.

“Vulcan is here?” Lachesis
asked.

“Aphrodite let him off the mountain?”
Atropos glanced at the other two Fates in surprise.

“He doesn’t like to leave his forge,”
Clotho said. “And no one has called him Vulcan in
years.”

“Well, they’re not calling
him Hephaestus, either,” Lachesis snapped.

Atropos let out a long breath. “Real
name,” she breathed, and in it, Kyle heard a warning.

He wasn’t entirely sure he understood
it, but he guessed that Lachesis had just used someone’s real name,
and that was bad.

“No,” Kyle said.
“Not a single Vulcan. But people from the planet Vulcan, like
in
Star Trek
.”

“Like Spock,” Clotho said with a
smile. “I must admit, he’s my favorite.”

“I prefer Kirk,” Lachesis said. “A man
of action is always more interesting.”

“Picard combines both logic and
action,” Atropos said. “And his head is delightfully
bald—”

“Stop!” Kyle held up his hands. His
queasy stomach put him in no mood for their conversations. “I just
asked about the three guys who’ve been following us all day. You
know, the ones with pointed ears?”

“Oh, them,” Clotho said, crossing her
arms and leaning against the brass railing that circled the
elevator. “I didn’t see them, did you?”

“No,” Lachesis said, looking up at the
floor numbers ticking away. “I didn’t see them anywhere. Certainly
not at the café or the water park.”

“Or Quark’s,” Atropos said, studying
her fingernails. “I didn’t see them at Quark’s either.”

Kyle couldn’t read the Fates’ minds
(for which he said a grateful prayer every night), but he didn’t
have to in this instance. And he was just queasy enough to forget
that they were adults and he wasn’t. Confronting the Fates didn’t
bother him.

“You know these guys, don’t you?” he
asked.

“Of course not,” all three Fates said
in unison, but not one looked at him, not even through their
reflections in the mirrors.

“What’s all this about?” Kyle asked,
but as he did, the elevator bobbed to a stop, and the doors slid
open, revealing their floor.

“Nothing,” Clotho said.

“Don’t you worry about it,” Lachesis
added.

“Really, it’s nothing,” Atropos said,
and then all three Fates giggled as they headed to their
room.

Kyle was going to ask if he should
come with them, and then he decided he didn’t care. They didn’t
have any money, so they couldn’t go out, and they knew where his
room was, so if they wanted to leave, they could just come and get
him.

Besides, he’d made his
desire for a nap known, and they had said they wanted one,
too.

If they were lying to him, and
bringing in those three weird guys, well then, that was their
problem, wasn’t it?

The thought made Kyle shiver. His dad
wouldn’t like it.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Either you gotta
come to my room or I gotta come to yours!”

“We’ll shower, nap, and then come find
you,” Clotho said.

“We promise we’ll be good,” Lachesis
said.

“The only strange men we’ll see will
be on television,” Atropos said.

Kyle rolled his eyes. He still wasn’t
sure he believed the Fates, but at least he could say that he
tried. He shuffled down the hall to his room, used the key to open
the door, and was nearly assaulted by a very lonely dachshund who
needed to go out.

Kyle looked down the hallway and
sighed. His stomach still ached. His skin felt like crispy chicken.
And the nap was coming whether he could hold it off or
not.

But Fang had his back legs crossed,
almost literally. So Kyle dropped his towel inside the door, and
headed back to the elevator, this time leading a dachshund who was
so glad to see him, Kyle nearly forgot how awful he
felt.

He got in the elevator and closed his
eyes, but not before checking to make sure the hallway outside the
Fates’ room was empty.

He had given those three guys the
slip.

Now he hoped they wouldn’t find him—or
the Fates—again.

Travers stood in the center of the
strange little shop, feeling even more out of place than he had
when he first came into Las Vegas. He had no idea how this store
would help him or Zoe find the Fates’ spinning wheel. He didn’t
know what the strange man had that Zoe could need. And he wasn’t
exactly sure what a shaman was, at least not in the context of
Zoe’s many magical worlds.

The shop was dark and cluttered. The
lamps, lit on various tables around the room, were all from the
1960s, and looked like they’d been rejected by Hugh Hefner for his
bachelor pad. They were bubble-shaped and garishly
colored.

They also didn’t give off much
light.

Travers was almost afraid to move
across the matted shag carpet to peer at the various items. He
recognized a Big Chief notebook in pristine condition and a fat
pencil beside it, the kind kids used to have when his dad was in
school.

There were ashtrays
everywhere—collections of ashtrays, from the Grand Canyon and all
of the old Vegas strip hotels and various bars. He could have
sworn, when he came into the shop, that the ashtrays were full, but
now when he looked at them, he realized they weren’t.

This place played a lot of tricks on
the eyes, and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like any of it. He felt
awkward just standing in the middle of the room like a forgotten
child, unable to touch anything.

Still, he had to do something. Maybe
there were books here that he could buy, books that would help him
study his new magical life. Travers sighed. It felt so odd to think
about a new magical life.

A movement caught Travers’ eye. A
mirror bubbled to life, filled with fog like a steaming pot. He
frowned at it, but didn’t step any closer.

The mirror was oval-shaped, just like
the mirrors in the movies, and it had a gilt frame that looked both
heavy and sturdy. The mirror was mounted on the wall, and beneath
it was a calligraphed sign that said in large letters:

Don’t Touch!!

He didn’t plan to. He had heard the
warnings, and he was learning that they existed for a good
reason.

Still, the mirror
continued to fog as if someone had a dry ice machine running behind
it. At the thought, Travers turned and saw only more tables behind
him, tables with tiny items that he couldn’t identify.

Finally a large cloud of smoke left
the mirror. The smoke surged forward, dispersing in the already
dark room. The air smelled faintly of burning leaves, and then the
scent faded as if it never was.

The mirror cleared, like a pond after
ripples faded away, and he found himself staring at a woman’s
face.

She had wild, green hair
that exploded around her head as if she were a cartoon character
who had stuck her fingers in a light socket. The green, however,
accented her opalescent skin, and made her green eyes
glow.

The mirror only showed her from her
face to her shoulders. She wore nothing on that part of her body,
not even earrings or a necklace. The look provided the illusion of
nudity, even if she were fully dressed from the chest
downward.

She was oddly beautiful. Travers took
a step toward her before he had to consciously think of
stopping.

He wasn’t supposed to touch anything,
no matter what.

“There you are,” the woman said, her
voice rich and warm, filled with vibrato. It almost sounded as if
she were singing. “I’ve been sensing you all day, and you’re in
Elmer’s store. Your magic makes you unhappy.”

Travers looked over his shoulder,
hoping that someone else was in the store with him. No one was, of
course. He was on his own.

She raised her eyebrows. They were
black, which somehow accented all that green. “I heard Elmer’s
instructions. He said not to touch, but he didn’t say not to
talk.”

“Who are you?” Travers
asked.

She smiled. “Someone who can make your
life a whole lot easier.”

Travers crossed his arms. “I don’t
talk to mysterious people who refuse to give their
names.”

“I’ve gotten a sense of you,” she said
as if he hadn’t spoken, “just from the short time that I’ve been
observing you. It’s pretty clear to me that you don’t like this
magic business. I can take your powers off your hands in exchange
for the wheel.”

“Wheel?” he asked, his heart
pounding.

“The spinning wheel,” the woman said.
“The one your friends the Fates are looking for. I can give it to
you.”

Scam operators were the same in magic
worlds and non-magic worlds. Somehow Travers found that
reassuring.

“Who did you say you were?” he
asked.