Absolutely Captivated (6 page)

“I’m sure there would have been others
to take us,” Atropos said.

“Now I understand why Vivian was
worried about our safety.” Clotho leaned back in her chair. “We are
becoming too impulsive.”

“That’s for another discussion.”
Lachesis put her hand on Kyle’s arm. He jumped. “No one ever taught
your father the rules of magic?”

“Why would they?” Kyle
asked.

“Oh, dear,” Atropos said quietly. “And
here we are, taking him to his soulmate.”

“Huh?” Kyle asked.

“It’s all right, dear,” Clotho said.
“We do need Zanthia’s help as well.”

“Dad’s soulmate is named Zanthia?”
Kyle asked, feeling confused.

“Shh!” All three women
said in unison.

“You should never discuss someone
else’s soulmate before the souls mate,” Lachesis said.

“Who
are
you guys?” Kyle
asked.

“Well,” Atropos said, wrapping her
robe tighter around herself. Kyle had guessed right; she was just
as cold as he was. “You weren’t that far off with the Wyrd
Sisters.”

“You heard
that
too?” Kyle felt his
cheeks heat up. He didn’t like calling people names because they
might overhear—heaven knew he always did at school, even though he
pretended like he hadn’t—but he was talking to his
dad
for heaven’s sake.
And that was private.

Clotho shrugged. “It was part of the
same discussion.”

“It was what made Clotho
decide we needed to come down here.” Lachesis’ towel turban was
slipping slightly, giving her face a pirate-like air.

“She’s not real fond of that
nickname,” Atropos said.

“I didn’t give it to her,” Kyle said,
his voice rising with the denial. He kinda had, but he wasn’t going
to admit it, at least not in this way. “I mean, it’s Norse. You
know, the myths.”

“We know the myths.”
Clotho stretched her bare legs out. She had goose pimples running
along her calves. “We’re the Fates, child.”

“Or at least, we used to be.” Lachesis
sounded sad.

“Used to be?” Kyle asked.

Atropos waved her hand. “Long story,
and one I’m sure you’ll hear when we meet up with
Zanthia.”

“Names!
” Clotho and Lachesis said in
unison, as if they were reminding Atropos of
something.

Atropos clapped her hands over her
mouth. “Sorry.”

“Fates?” Kyle said again.
“The ones who determine life and death?”

“Yes, child,” Clotho said.

“You’re not making this
up?” Kyle asked, feeling his neck get warm, too, as his blush moved
down. “Like using the names as a test or something, like for
school?”

“What do you mean?” Lachesis
asked.

“You know, like I was supposed to
notice that you were named after the Fates or something.” Kyle put
his feet on his chair and rubbed his cold toes. His hands weren’t
much warmer. But it gave him an excuse to keep his head down. “I
don’t remember ever learning your names. We had to memorize the
Muses. There’s Erato and Terpsichore and Polyhymnia
and—”

“Oh, please don’t confuse us with
those bores,” Atropos said.

“Besides,” Clotho said. “They stopped
working as a unit centuries ago.”

“Millennia,” Lachesis said.

“Three women can get along,” Atropos
said. “Nine, however—”

“It does make things dicey,” Clotho
said.

“And you
would
have to mention
Polyhymnia,” Lachesis said. “Religious poetry is one thing, but
religious music—”

“That’s not fair,” Atropos
said. “There was a lovely Golden Age—what, a few years ago? That
Bach fellow—”

“Like Johann?” Kyle asked.

The three
women—Fates?—nodded.

“That was centuries ago,” Kyle said,
feeling shocked.

Clotho waved a hand in dismissal. “I’m
still not certain of the ways that mortals tell time. A century, a
year, what’s the difference?”

“Decades,” Kyle said.

“Still, we’re not to the central
point,” Lachesis said. “Which is helping you.”

“If your father won’t acknowledge his
magic, then there’s not much we can do,” Atropos said.

“Don’t you have magic?” Kyle
asked.

“We used to,” Clotho said, and all
three women looked very sad.

“It’s part of that long story,”
Lachesis said.

“Oh,” Kyle said. “Well, look, my dad
might wake up and find me missing, and if he does I’m in a heck of
a lot of trouble, so I’m going to go to bed. Just don’t talk to him
about this, okay? And all the magic stuff? Tomorrow, let’s just
drive. Really, it’s for the best.”

The Fates nodded. Kyle
nodded back, like a grown-up would, and then he stalked away from
the pool, not caring that the concrete seemed even colder than it
had a moment ago, and that he was hitting rocks with his bare
feet.

Served him right for listening to
other people. It didn’t matter that Aunt Viv had found someone who
appreciated her psychic powers. It didn’t matter that Uncle Dex
believed in (and maybe even had) magic.

All that mattered was that Kyle’s
father didn’t believe in psychic powers or magic, no matter how
much psychic ability Kyle had.

And he had to remember that, instead
of getting carried away because someone else found the secret to
happiness.

Kyle hurried up the stairs, ripped the
note off the Fates’ door, and let himself into his own hotel room.
His dad was still asleep, only he’d rolled away from the door. His
even breathing reassured Kyle, as Kyle pushed the door
closed.

It was the two of them. It had always
been the two of them.

And it always would be.

A few days later, Travers found
himself sitting on a Las Vegas freeway, wondering when his life had
spiraled out of control.

He was hot. The air-conditioner in his
SUV was running at full blast, but it didn’t seem to matter. He was
sitting in the sun, his hands pasted to the steering wheel, trying
to negotiate all the traffic on Interstate 15 heading into Las
Vegas.

Kyle was buckled in beside him,
staring gape-mouthed at the conglomeration of hotels and goofy
architecture that made Vegas a place out of nightmares. The SUV was
paralleling the Strip and to the right were some of the
architecturally strangest buildings Travers had ever
seen.

A large green hotel that went for
stories. A replica of the Statue of Liberty, almost hidden by all
the buildings, a replica of the Eiffel Tower (who would go to that
thing? Why not go to the real one?), and a volcano that spewed fake
lava into the overheated air. There were pools and marble statues
and big, big, big signs advertising names Travers had never heard
of and a whole bunch that he had.

In the back seat, the three Wyrd
Sisters, as Kyle had once called them, were arguing quietly about
their next course of action. At least, Travers thought they were
being quiet. He wasn’t sure. He had the radio on full blast,
letting Travis Tritt and Alan Jackson and Oak Ridge Mountain Boys
speak for him.

Travers wasn’t about to get into a
conversation with those three women again, if he could help
it.

He wasn’t even sure how he
ended up in Las Vegas with his son at his side, and three of the
craziest women he’d ever met in the back seat. Sure, he knew the
sequence of events. Those were easy.

First, he had driven the
women to L.A., and asked where they wanted to be dropped off. They
had no idea, so he had taken them to his house (mistake number
one), where they examined the phonebook and let Kyle look on the
Internet for this woman they were supposed to see.

Her name, apparently, was Zanthia, but
she answered to Zoe as well. (Everyone the Wyrd Sisters seemed to
know had more than one name. Even the guy that Vivian had married
had a different name, at least according to the three women.) This
Zanthia was a private detective, according to the Wyrd Sisters, and
should have been fairly easy to find.

Of course, she wasn’t easy
to find. There wasn’t a Zanthia as a private detective anywhere in
L.A. Nor was there a Zoe as a private detective. Not in the phone
book, not on the Internet, and not at any of the big firms that the
Wyrd Sisters had convinced Travers to call.

Then, it turned out, this Zanthia/Zoe
woman had been a private detective since the 1930s which, in
Travers’ book, meant she was either dead or retired, although the
Wyrd Sisters didn’t think so. Kyle, bless him, didn’t do the math,
so he didn’t think the history was strange either.

He just continued his
Internet search, going through old databases that the libraries had
set up until he found her. Zoe Sinclair, Private Detective. With an
address from the 1940s.

Of course, the Wyrd Sisters were
convinced that was their woman, and they insisted that Kyle do a
broader search. Any private detective anywhere in the nation with
the name Zoe Sinclair.

Because
, one of the Wyrds (Clotho?)
had said to Travers,
she would probably
have moved on by now. It’s quite a problem when you don’t age
properly
.

Kyle had nodded, as if that statement
had been logical, and at that moment, Kyle had discovered a Zoe
Sinclair who worked out of Las Vegas.

This was where the sequence of events
got strange.

The next group of events
was one long blur consisting of Kyle begging Travers to take care
of the Wyrd Sisters and get them to Vegas, Travers calling Viv to
ask her what she had gotten him into, Viv refusing to answer the
phone (it was her honeymoon, after all), and Kyle throwing a temper
tantrum right around bedtime.

So the Wyrd Sisters had spent the
night in Travers’ house in the Hollywood Hills, and the next
morning, he awoke to find them sitting at his table, counting
pennies, hoping that $3.56 would be enough for bus fare.

Event Six was the
clearest, though. Kyle pulling Travers aside and saying,
Dad, look. They’re just not like normal people.
You can’t let them get on a bus by themselves. That’s what Uncle
Dex was worried about. You need to hand them off to
someone.

Like the Olympic
Torch
? Travers asked, too exhausted to
worry about his sarcasm.

Exactly!
Kyle had said, and clapped his hands
together.

And somehow Event Six had
led to Event Seven, which was Travers pouring everyone into the SUV
all over again, and heading out across the desert to Las
Vegas.

Eight hours, six traffic
jams, and one mistaken casino lunch stop later, they were pulling
into Sin City proper, with no real idea of where they were going,
and no plan on how to get there. Kyle had downloaded maps for this
Zoe Sinclair’s office, which happened to be somewhere called
Fremont Street, which looked like it was just past the
downtown.

Drivers zoomed in and out
of the lanes as if they were playing bumper cars. The traffic in
Las Vegas was heavy, but not nearly as heavy as L.A. traffic. At
least in Vegas, the traffic kept moving.

The problem was the distractions. The
glittery signs advertising Celine Dion at Caesar’s Palace,
Siegfried and Roy at the Mirage, and the Blue Man Group at the
Luxor fairly screamed for attention from the side of the road. More
hotels, some looking like European palaces, rose up to the right,
and to the left, shops and hotels, and houses that shimmered like a
heat mirage in the desert air.

A neon sign for a bank Travers had
never heard of kindly informed him that it was 105 degrees—not
normally a problem for him (he was a native Angelino, after
all)—but in this condition, with these women in his car, his quiet
son beside him, and in this city where he didn’t know anyone, it
was simply one more irritation.

And he was sitting in the sun, unable
to turn until I-15 became I-515 in a few more miles.

Not to mention the fact that his plans
were shot. He had planned to leave early enough to make the
drive—both ways—in one day. That way, Travers wouldn’t miss any
more work, and Kyle would be home in time to register for the
month-long summer session at his school.

Travers wondered if
this weren’t all a plot. After all, Kyle had mentioned the Wyrd
Sisters and the
Star Trek
Experience
nearly a week ago. All the way
here, he was reading travel guides like they were the
Bible.

The approach to 515 came
up faster than Travers expected. Somehow he had gotten it into his
head that Las Vegas was the same size as L.A. Nothing in North
America was the same size as L.A. Maybe in population, but not in
sheer sprawl.

He whipped the SUV into the correct
lane, making his passengers gasp, and then, on two wheels, somehow
managed to slide in front of a very large truck without anyone
hitting the brakes.