Totally Spellbound (3 page)

But she didn’t see a dog.

Was she losing her mind? First the
falconer on the highway (and the lights going out. What was that?),
then the Fates (had they really said that? Or had she imagined
it?), and now this imaginary dog.

She steeled herself and reached for
the sheet again, only to hear a half-bark and feel the snap of
teeth as they closed near her hand.

She yanked it back so quickly that she
nearly hurt herself. The side of her palm was wet. Drool? Slobber?
She couldn’t tell.

“Aunt Megan?” Kyle was looking up at
her, his adorable face mashed together in a squint. “You’re
here.”

“Indeed I am, boyo,” she said and went
to ruffle his hair, then thought better of it. “Everything’s gonna
be okay now.”

He smiled, snuggled deeper into the
pillow, and sighed. Something moved across his shoulder. The
something was black and long and never-ending.

Megan squealed.

Kyle raised his head. “It’s just Fang,
Aunt Megan.”

“Fang?”

He reached over and snapped on the
light beside the bed. An obese dachshund guarded the space between
Kyle’s chest and Megan, its black eyes glittery and
fierce.

“Fang,” Kyle said. “He’s my dad’s
familiar, but really, he’s my dog.”

She hadn’t heard that right. “He’s a
what?”

“Oh, yeah.” Kyle rubbed his eyes.
“Nobody told you.”

“Told me what?”

“About the magic.”

She’d wandered into
a
Twilight Zone
episode, only life hadn’t become black and white. Maybe it
was an episode of
Punk’d,
and Ashton Kutcher would reveal himself at any
moment.

That wouldn’t be so bad,
right?

The dog was still staring at
her.

“Does it bite?” Megan asked, nodding
toward the dog.

Kyle put his hand on the dog’s back
and pressed it toward the sheets. “That’s my Aunt Megan,” he said
as if the dog could understand him. “She’s one of the good
guys.”

The dog lay down and then
sighed, as if a huge burden had been lifted off it.

“You still didn’t answer me,” she
said. “Does it bite?”

“No,
he
doesn’t,” Kyle said,
“unless you’re like totally evil. Or
incompetent.”

She blinked, trying
to make sense out of all this. The women in the next room had been
watching one of the
Lord of the
Rings
movies. Maybe they’d let Kyle watch
it before he went to sleep. Maybe he was still half asleep, which
was why he was talking so oddly.

“If he doesn’t bite,” she said, being
careful with the pronoun, “why did you name him Fang?”

“Because he told me that was his name.
His previous owner called him Bartholomew, which Fang thinks is
stupid, but he doesn’t mind it when Zoe calls him Bartholomew
Fang.”

“Zoe? Is she one of the women
outside?”

“Nope. She’s a detective. She thinks
my dad doesn’t like her because she’s too old, but he doesn’t care.
And she doesn’t look that old anyway.”

Megan had to be in
a
Twilight Zone
episode. This conversation was too complicated for
Punk’d
.

“A detective?” Megan pushed her hair
away from her face. “What’s going on? Is your dad in
trouble?”

“No.” Kyle shoved his pillow against
the back of the bed, picked up the obese dog, and moved it—him—to
one side. Then he patted the space where the dog had been, like he
thought Megan should sit in it, doggy smell and all.

She gave the blanket a
sideways look, squared her shoulders, and then sat down. It was
still warm from that dog body. The dog watched her, but didn’t
growl any more.

“It’s okay, Fang, really,” Kyle said
to the dog. “She’s just cautious because some big old dog tried to
kill her once.”

That was as blunt as
anyone had ever put it. She’d never told a soul about her fears.
Even her father had said the dog wasn’t trying to hurt her—all the
way to the hospital, where they’d given her rabies shots and five
stitches in the bite on her shoulder.

“Fang says that other dog was stupid,
and he’d only have hurt you if you’d have hurt me.” Kyle still had
his hand on the dog’s neck.

The dog was looking at Megan as if
indeed it—he—had said those words. In fact, it—he—had that
expression people got when they expected an answer.

Kyle’s expression mirrored
it.

“Thanks, Fang,” Megan said as
sincerely as she could. “I’ll work on the trust issues.”

The dog nodded—or it
seemed to nod—then it (he, dang it!) circled three times and lay
down beside Kyle.

“You’re cool, Aunt Megan,” Kyle said.
“I didn’t know how much dogs scared you till just then.”

Uncanny. She always forgot
how uncanny this kid was, how supernaturally intuitive. Just like
Vivian when she was little. Everyone was convinced Viv was psychic.
Megan had learned in all her psych courses and her subsequent work
that there was no such thing as psychic. But there were amazingly
in-tune people who could read signals better than most. Vivian had
that skill, and somehow, Kyle had acquired it too.

Kyle’s cheeks were red, as
if what he had just said had embarrassed him. He plucked at the
blanket.

Megan tried to get the conversation
back on track. “If your dad isn’t in trouble, what’s he doing with
a detective?”

“Besides kissing her?” Kyle
asked.

It was Megan’s turn to blush. She
hadn’t seen Travers with a woman since Cheryl had left him and baby
Kyle over nine years ago.

“Yeah, I guess,” Megan
said.

“They’re trying to rescue some
spinning wheel for the Fates,” Kyle said.

“Excuse me?” Megan asked.

Kyle hit his forehead with the heel of
his hand. “I keep forgetting that you haven’t been here the whole
time. You always know what’s going on and this time it’s been kinda
weird.”

“Just tell me,” Megan said.

And so he did.

* * *

Even if Megan believed in magic and
fate and all that mumbo jumbo, she still wasn’t sure if this story
could be true. It sounded like Kyle had recounted a dream. Still,
her profession had taught her the importance of dreams—in them
lurked the subconscious, with its wants, desires, and knowledge—so
she struggled to pay attention.

What she finally understood was this:
the women in the living room of the suite truly believed they were
the Greek Fates who had ruled over mankind for centuries. They had
been all-powerful until Zeus had initiated a coup and instituted
his daughters as new Fates.

This, however, was a problem as the
Fates administered more than life and death. They kept alive all
the rules that created true love.

Zeus, for grown-up reasons
that Kyle didn’t really want to understand, wanted to destroy true
love. In order to destroy true love, Zeus had had to get rid of the
Fates, which he had done, even tricking them into giving up their
magical powers.

The Fates needed to get their magic
back. To do that, they needed their old spinning wheel. It could
restore their powers ten thousand times over.

The problem was that the
spinning wheel had been stolen by the Faerie Kings, who had needed
the magic to start their rival magical kingdom. They had hidden the
wheel, and now the Fates had to find it.

Which was why they needed a detective.
That was Zoe.

So Travers was helping Zoe
find a magic spinning wheel. And, oh, by the way, the reason
Travers had always been so good with money was because he was
magical, too. Just like Zoe, who was over a hundred years
old.

Megan wasn’t sure she had
gotten it all, but she clung to this: the Fates had magic once, but
they didn’t any longer. Her stolid brother, who didn’t even like
fiction about magic, was really a magician, and he had fallen in
love with a woman who was at least seventy years older than he
was—a woman who was both detective and magician.

It was, if Megan did say so herself,
one of the most inventive stories a kid had ever told her. And she
had heard some doozies over the years.

“And I should probably say one more
thing.” Kyle was watching her as she absorbed the
information.

“What’s that, hon?” she
asked.

“The reason I’m so ‘intuitive’ all the
time is that I can read minds.”

She stared at him. He
actually believed that part of it. Was it a defense mechanism? Some
way to cope with being off-the-charts brilliant and so incredibly
precocious as a result? Not many eleven-year-olds had the
vocabulary he did, the maturity he did, and the sensitivity he
did.

His shoulders wilted in the face of
her silence.

“It’s okay,” he said quietly. “You
don’t have to believe me.”

She took his warm little hand in hers.
“I do, Kyle,” she said, telling herself she wasn’t really lying.
She believed that he believed all of this.

“You’ll see,” he said, slipping
grumpily under his blankets. “This is all true. You won’t be able
to explain it away, Aunt Meg. If Dad can come around, you can
too.”

She bent over, kissed his forehead,
and tucked the sheet around him. Then she shut off the
light.

“I’m sure I can, kiddo,” she said
quietly. “I’m sure I can.”

The Fate women were crowded around the
bedroom door, apparently attempting to eavesdrop. Megan nearly
knocked two of them over as she pushed the door outward. They
scrambled backward and didn’t even try to apologize.

Megan had learned over the
years that rudeness was something she couldn’t abide. It was,
according to her own counselor (all therapists had to have a
therapist during their educational phase. It was a requirement for
the advanced degree), part of being the youngest child in a chaotic
household.

The Fate women watched her as if they
could divine her reaction.

She wasn’t going to let them know how
much her conversation with Kyle had disturbed her.

“You want to tell me where my brother
is?” she asked.

The women looked at each
other, obviously surprised. That pleased her. Keeping others off
balance was always good. It kept everyone from concentrating on
her.

“Well?” she asked, a little too
loudly, to drown her own thoughts.

“He’s probably in Faerie by now,”
Clotho said.

“Although he might not be,” Lachesis
said.

“He might be out,” Atropos
said.

“If we still had magic, we could find
out for you,” Clotho said.

“Alas, we do not,” Lachesis
said.

The “alas” was the last
straw.

“You women are the ones who are
screwing up my nephew, aren’t you?” Megan snapped. Part of her was
startled at herself. She never snapped at people. She always took a
reasonable tone of voice, always counted to ten before she spoke,
always made sure she had thought through everything she had to
say.

But the last twelve hours
had strained her. She had rearranged her schedule, worried about
her brother, driven here much too late — saw that falconer (he was
cute too) — and watched the lights go out on the interstate, and
then came here to three weird women, a dog, and a nephew who was
convinced he was psychic.

“Screwing up?” Atropos asked. “Young
Kyle is the sanest person we know.”

“Which doesn’t say much for the people
you know,” Megan said. “Why did my brother leave Kyle in your
custody?”

“Custody,” Clotho whispered to
Lachesis. “She uses police talk.”

“You didn’t tell us you were a police
officer,” Lachesis said to Megan.

“I’m not,” Megan said, wondering how
they could think such a thing and why it mattered. “I’m a child
psychologist, and I’m now convinced you people are poisoning my
nephew’s mind.”

“Ooooooh,” Atropos
said. “You’re a
scientist
.”

As if that were a bad
thing.

“Yeah,” Megan said. “So mumbo-jumbo
and I don’t get along. Now, tell me where my brother
is.”

“Well.” Clotho looked at the other two
women. “We’re not exactly sure.”

“Thank you,” Megan said. “A little
honesty is much more like it.”

Lachesis bit her lower lip.

“So, why did he leave my nephew
alone?”

“Because,” Lachesis said, “someone had
to rescue Zoe.”

Megan’s eyebrows shot up. “Travers is
not the kind of man who rescues a detective.”

If, indeed, this Zoe was a detective.
All Megan had was Kyle’s rather jumbled word on that.