Totally Spellbound (2 page)

And she wasn’t supposed to.

No one was supposed to.

He brought Felix out to hunt at least
five times a week—a falcon got restless in the big city—and he did
it as far away from anything as he could get. Of course, he didn’t
go too far because there were sorcerers nearby, ones who would take
advantage of regularly scheduled magic.

He tried to vary his locations, using
the interstate only when he felt he had no other choice.

Like tonight. He’d gone to
his favorite spot only to find that someone was holding a rave
there. He probably could have created a bubble in that spot—bubbles
warped time just enough so that most normal folks felt a shiver as
they passed through or saw a heat shimmer—and no one would have
noticed.

But he hadn’t wanted to risk
it.

And then this: no one had
ever driven into one of his bubbles before, skidded to a stop, and
slapped herself.

He knew he had to do something—and
quickly—but he wasn’t sure what. He couldn’t just dissolve the
bubble: there was Felix to think about, first of all, and he didn’t
want the falcon to know that his night’s catch wasn’t real.
Besides, the woman might get into trouble if she stepped into the
road at the wrong moment.

So he walked out onto the
road, pretended a nonchalance he didn’t feel, and said, “Have you
seen a bird?”

Which he had been
kicking himself about ever since.
Have you
seen a bird
? Of course, she had seen a
bird. She had slammed on her brakes (nice woman, that) and she had
pulled over to the side of the road. She’d probably seen the
rabbit, too, and then she saw him, in his hunting
garb.

He liked to wear the
clothes he’d grown up in on these nights, even though they were
more suited to an English forest than to a Nevada desert. Just a
little touch of his past.

But he saw her lovely
green eyes assess his clothing as if he were dressed like Bozo the
Clown, and he noted something like weary resignation on her face.
Either this woman expected strange things to happen to her, or
something had been going wrong in her life long before he’d asked
his inane question.

She’d answered him, of course. She had
a deep, throaty voice that sent a tingle through him. He hadn’t
heard a voice that beautiful in centuries.

But he tried to ignore it.
He didn’t even smile at her, he did nothing to put her at ease, and
then he hurried off the road, only to crouch on the other side of
the interstate and watch her gather herself and get back into the
car.

He felt bad; he really
did. He had added to her difficulties without intending to, and she
looked like she hadn’t needed that. So he decided to be especially
gentle in easing her out of the bubble.

Instead of simply
dissolving the bubble over the interstate, he dismantled it piece
by piece, sending her little warnings such as the lights coming
back on, a few trucks going by, a whole host of small things before
he let her out of the magical protection and back into her ordinary
life.

If, indeed, she had an ordinary life.
Not many people could see magic if the mage didn’t want them to.
Unless, of course, those people had magic themselves. And she was
too young. No one had skin that creamy in middle-age, not even
women who had fortunes to spend on reinventing themselves with
plastic surgeries and too many cold creams.

He remained crouched by the side of
the road long after she had driven away. He restored the bubble
over the interstate, and no one else entered it, so he knew that
his magic hadn’t gone awry.

Just that woman—that young, pretty
woman—had managed to get through his defenses.

No one had been able to do that for
more than eight centuries. He felt a pang of loss, mixed with a
sharp thread of loneliness.

Eight centuries.

And he had let her drive
away.

Megan arrived in Las Vegas at one in
the morning. The streets were filled with cars, the neon stabbed
her eyes, and she had never felt so relieved in her
life.

She was beginning to think she had
seen a mirage in the desert—and it wasn’t a hotel designed by Steve
Wynn. That hunter got handsomer and handsomer the more she thought
about him, a dream lover appearing in the foggy mist of her lonely
headlights.

Lonely. That probably was the cause of
her mirage, her hallucination, her dream-vision. She hadn’t spent
quality time with anyone—her family, her friends, let alone a
man—in a very, very long time.

The hotel that Travers had picked was
a no-name thing off the Strip. That didn’t surprise her. What
surprised her was how nice the hotel was. Travers, once the poorest
of the siblings, had become the richest (at least, Megan thought
so, although Vivian inherited all of Great-Aunt Eugenia’s estate).
Travers claimed he had made his fortune by staying at the lowest
priced hotels, refusing to splurge on the latest fad, paying cash
for his house.

He called it “being frugal.” Megan
called it “unnecessarily cheap.”

This place looked like a splurge from
Travers’ perspective. From Megan’s, it seemed like a godsend. It
actually had a front lobby instead of some dweeb living on-site,
and rooms inside the main building instead of cabins down a long
sidewalk. Elevators, a fitness room, and a restaurant inside—all
the necessary amenities, from Megan’s point of view.

It took only a few minutes to check in
(competent desk clerks! What a concept!) and take the elevator up
to Travers’ floor. A bellman, on duty in the middle of the night
(such luxury!), hefted her single bag all the way to her room for
her.

According to the numbers that greeted
her when she got off the elevator, her room was at the end of the
hall. She walked past door after door, wondering how Travers had
found this place. The farther she got into it, the more unlike him
it seemed.

Then she used her keycard to open the
door to her room and stopped in amazement. He hadn’t gotten her a
room. He had gotten her a suite, complete with living room, small
kitchen, and a single bedroom.

Three large rooms behind one locked
door, and quite obviously hers, because that bellman had placed her
overweight bag on the luggage rack inside the nearest coat
closet.

Nearest coat closet. There were
others.

A shiver ran through her. This was
confirmation that Travers was in trouble. He would never
voluntarily take a place like this—and he would never pay for one
like it for her.

Maybe she should check to see if hell
had frozen over.

Instead, she pocketed her keycard,
spun on one toe, and walked out of the room. She stopped at the
only room beside it, the one with the same number she’d been using
when she called him back, and knocked. (There actually was a
doorbell beside the door, but she was too scared to use
it.)

For a moment, she was
afraid that she had the wrong room or that no one had heard her.
She raised her fist to knock again when the door swept
open.

A tall, willowy blonde
answered. She was stunningly beautiful, with delicate little
features that formed the most perfect face. She wore a pink
negligee and a matching robe with feathers trimming the sleeves and
hem.

She was everything that Megan was
not—slender, gorgeous, perfect, tall—the kind of woman guaranteed
to make Megan even more nervous than she already was.

“I must have the wrong room,” Megan
said.

“Nonsense.” Even the
woman’s voice was feminine—light and floaty with just a hint of
dumb blond. “You’re Travers’ sister, aren’t you? Come on
in.”

The woman stepped aside. Her negligee
flowed around her as if she were on stage. Megan walked in, peering
around the corner for Kyle.

She didn’t see him, but she did see a
pristine comic book on one of the end tables. He was here
somewhere.

This room was a suite,
too, only it was filthy. Two other women sat on the couch—a
brunette with a petite skinniness that made her look athletic and
breakable at the same time, and a redhead who was as heavy as
Megan. Only that redhead—whose hair really was flaming Vegas red,
not the auburn that Megan was blessed with—had her curves in all
the right places.

She wore a green negligee,
while the brunette wore a white one. They were eating popcorn and
staring at the big screen TV, their mule-covered feet resting on
the coffee table.

At that moment, Megan
realized she had seen them before. The three women had been at
Vivian’s wedding less than a month ago. Megan hadn’t had a chance
to talk to them, though, because every time she glanced at them,
they seemed to be talking to one another.

The blonde walked over and shut the
television off. The redhead looked up grumpily. “It’s the best
part.”

“We have to know if the nassty shadowy
creaturesss are going to get the hobbitsses,” the brunette
said.

“We’ve seen it already.” The blond
sounded grumpy. “Besides, Travers’ sister is here.”

The redhead stood and
extended her hand. She was tall, too. No wonder her curves worked.
“You’re Megan? I’m Lachesis.”

“I’m Atropos,” said the
brunette.

“And I’m Clotho,” said the
blonde.

“Sure you are,” Megan said. “It’s
late, but it’s not that late. And if you ladies are the Fates of
Greek Mythology, I’m going to eat my shorts.”

“Please don’t,” said the
redhead.

“You’re not wearing shorts, are you?”
asked the brunette.

“I think she means underwear,” the
blonde said.

Megan wanted to slap herself again.
This was worse than a falconer in the desert.

“And we are the Fates, I’m afraid,”
the redhead said. “Or at least—”

“We used to be,” the brunette
said.

“We’re trying to get our job back,”
said the blonde.

At the mention of a job, Megan felt a
little calmer. They were some kind of Las Vegas lounge act, and
they’d hired Travers to help them.

“Travers is good with money and
accounting,” Megan said. “I’m sure with his business savvy, he’ll
get the casino to rehire you.”

“We’re not looking for a casino hire,”
the redhead—Lachesis?—said.

“But close enough for the moment.” The
brunette—Atropos?—glanced at the other two. “Right?”

The blonde, Clotho, nodded. “Because
that’s where he is right now. Getting our—ahem—job
back.”

Megan’s head ached. She rubbed her
nose with her thumb and forefinger, getting a sense she wouldn’t
understand what was going on if she tried.

“Where’s Kyle?” she asked.

All three women smiled. Lachesis
nodded toward the nearest bedroom, Atropos pointed, and Clotho
indicated it with her hand.

“In there,” they said in
unison.

This day was getting stranger by the
minute. Megan excused herself and walked to the door. She put her
hand on the knob, then held a finger to her lips, indicating that
the three strange women remain quiet.

She opened the door. The familiar
scents of Gatorade, peanut butter, and little boy reached her. She
smiled in spite of herself and closed the door behind
her.

A night-light gave the
room a faint illumination. Bottles, a Spider-Man thermos, and some
wrappers littered a bedside table. Kyle was sprawled on the bed,
his bare feet sticking out of the covers, his round little face
looking naked without his glasses.

Kyle looked just like
Travers had at that age, or like Travers would have if he had
preferred computers to basketball and comic books to track. They
shared a heart-shaped face and blond hair with the same cowlick
right in the center of the forehead.

Travers had gotten the classic good
looks in the family—not that the family had been doling out looks.
All three children had been adopted. Vivian was slight and dark
with the curliest hair any woman had ever had; Travers was tall and
blond—the male equivalent of Clotho, if the truth be told; and
Megan was small and round, “round” being the operative
word.

Her parents had never said anything
about it, preferring to love their children as they were. If Megan
commented on her weight, her mother would smile and say that Megan
would grow out of it.

At twenty-five, she was still waiting
for that miracle to happen.

She approached the bed. Her nephew
looked so vulnerable there, his hand curled beneath his chin. She
reached for the sheet to pull it over his shoulders when something
growled at her.

She leapt backward in complete fright,
her heart pounding. She hadn’t seen anything, but she had heard it.
She knew she had.

A growl.

Wasn’t it?

Or maybe it was some weird
noise that Kyle had made in his sleep.

She walked back to the bed
and heard it again. A huge growl. She was shaking. She had been
attacked by a dog when she was little—a German Shepherd that had
knocked her to the ground and bit her and growled when her father
pulled it off, wrestled it off, really—and she hadn’t liked dogs
ever since.