Totally Spellbound (35 page)

John’s already upswept
eyebrows went up. Rob picked himself off the floor, amazed he
hadn’t had the wind knocked out of him or felt bruised from the
fall.

“Playing with the mortals for a second
night in a row?” she asked Travers.

He gave her a nervous smile and said,
“Is it that obvious?”

She rubbed his hair. “I like you
blond. I don’t think I’d recognize you with dark hair.”

Then she grinned at John.

He gave her a startled look
back.

“I don’t think we’ve been introduced,”
she said in a seductive tone.

“And I don’t see any point, since
you’ve already claimed my friend there,” John said, sounding as
nervous as Travers.

Rob stood and brushed
himself off. No one seemed to notice him. Of course, he was the
only one of the three short enough to fit into Faerie. He looked
like countless other Faerie men standing around the
machines.

And that was the problem.
There were countless Faeries all over this section of the makeshift
casino.

Shouldn’t they have been
gone by now? Megan had gone to the Faerie casino on Boulder
Highway, hadn’t she?

He would have sworn that her presence
would have attracted them.

If he was wrong, then this plan wasn’t
going to work.

If he was wrong, they have just placed
themselves in serious danger.

If he was wrong, everything was going
to fail.

The hotel suite
looked like something out of an
X-Men
movie. Kyle sat in a big
leather chair—the kind that Professor X would use, only cooler—and
Zoe sat a few feet away. She had ordered complete quiet, mostly so
that the Fates, who were on the other side of the room, wouldn’t
distract everyone with their talking.

Zoe had cleared most of
the furniture out of this bedroom in the suite, except for the
chair (which she conjured out of somewhere) and the table in front
of the Fates, and the big screen TV which showed a faint picture of
the casino that Aunt Meg had gone into.

Zoe couldn’t use mage
magic inside the casino—that would point out the plan to the
Faeries—but she had installed real surveillance, like in the
movies, on the outside. What they all saw was a real picture of the
place from a little digital computer camera and a strategically
placed computer not too far away.

Wireless. Like magic, Zoe
said.

Kyle’s stomach was doing somersaults.
Dad didn’t want him involved in this, but Zoe and the Fates
promised he’d be all right.

He knew he would be, but everything
rested on him—or at least, Aunt Megan’s safety did. He had to be
calm and receptive to her thoughts even though he wouldn’t get the
simple, everyday ones. Only the panicked scared ones, and only if
she had any of those at all.

His mouth was dry. He hadn’t been this
nervous ever. At least that he could remember.

Fang waddled into the room, and jumped
on Kyle’s lap, startling him. Kyle petted the heavy dog, glad for
the company.

The Fates weren’t paying any attention
to him. They were studying the Faerie map, which was spread out on
the table before them. If there was some kind of problem with the
wheel—and they didn’t expect it—they were to let Zoe know, not that
anyone could do anything about it, at least that Kyle knew about.
Because there wasn’t a backup for this part of the plan, unless
Robin Hood had only told Zoe and her thoughts were blocking
whatever it was, which Kyle hoped was the case, because he was
really, really nervous….

“Kyle,” Zoe said
softly, “I’m not an empath, and you’re making
me
nervous.”

“Sorry,” he said, and hugged Fang.
Fang uttered a little squeak—a very undoglike noise—and struggled
to get free. Kyle let the dog go.

He’d never been the center of a
magical adventure before.

And he wasn’t really the center now.
He was more like the fail-safe backup. In some ways, Aunt Megan was
the center.

She had sure looked
nervous on the camera as she walked into that ratty casino. But she
didn’t have to do anything except sit there and look pretty, at
least that’s what Rob had said, and he’d meant it too. He thought
the Faeries would surround her like moths around really bright
light.

So far, Kyle couldn’t tell
if it was working. But he’d be able to tell if it went wrong.
They’d tested it, and Aunt Megan had a pretty good mental shout,
especially after Zoe enhanced his abilities to pick up over a
distance.

Kyle swallowed against his dry throat.
He’d have to trust everyone and hope this worked.

Because really, this whole thing was
his fault. If he hadn’t insisted that Dad drive the Fates to Vegas,
if he hadn’t introduced them to Aunt Megan, if he hadn’t goaded
Robin Hood, then no one would be in Faerie right now.

But he had, and they were, and he was
waiting.

He hated the waiting most of
all.

Megan poked at the JELL-O,
trying to get to the lime slices inside. The JELL-O jiggled, but
its surface seemed impenetrable. She sighed and glanced
around.

The blue-haired old ladies were still
waving their cigarettes, the obese young man was at the buffet
proper, filling his plate with the so-called food, and another
elderly man peered into the service area, as if he were wondering
whether or not he could sit down without a hostess escorting
him.

But no Faeries. Was
the thing about Faeries being drawn to empaths a myth—the
kind
not
based in
fact?

She didn’t even look at the roast
beef, which she had gingerly taken a piece from, nor did she try to
figure out whether or not the mashed potatoes were
edible.

She did wonder whether the
Faeries’ lack of time sense applied to how long food had been
sitting under heating lamps, and then she shivered, trying to
resist the urge to warn that poor young man away from his
meal.

A door from the kitchen opened, and a
small woman wearing spiked heels and a full-skirted cocktail dress
backed her way out. As she turned, it became clear why she had to
back out. She had a large tray braced against her stomach. Part of
the tray was held in place by a strap around her neck.

She pasted a smile on her face and
said, “Cigars? Cigarettes? Cigarillos?”

Megan gawked. A cigarette girl? She’d
never seen one outside of the movies. She actually thought they
were a Hollywood construct.

“Cigars?” the woman asked.
“Cigarettes? Cigarillos?”

Her voice had a warmth to
it that Megan hadn’t heard before. It almost shimmered with magic.
Her hair was black and cut close, hiding her ears, but her features
were delicate, like Zoe said Faerie-features were.

“Cigars?” The word just
drifted off toward the end, and it wasn’t followed by cigarettes or
cigarillos. Instead, the woman turned toward Megan and raised one
painted eyebrow.

Megan froze in her chair, afraid to
move, afraid she might do something that would break the
moment.

The woman started toward her. The tray
really did have cigar packages, cigarette packs, and long boxes of
cigarillos. Also, candy cigarettes, and a small box filled with
change.

Were they even charging
twenty-first century prices for the cigarettes?

Then the woman unhooked the strap from
around her neck. The strap slid to one side, and the tray fell to
the floor, spilling cigarettes and cigarillos all over the
threadbare carpet.

The blue-haired old ladies looked—not
to see if the cigarette girl was all right—but to see if anyone
would notice if they stole cigarettes.

The cigarette girl headed toward
Megan, eyes glittering. The girl’s expression looked like something
out of a zombie movie, which made Megan shudder.

The girl reached her side and touched
Megan’s arm, ever so gingerly.

“Are you…?” she asked, but didn’t
finish the sentence.

Megan had been instructed not to
volunteer anything, no matter how much she wanted to.

“The emotion radiates off you,” the
girl said, her voice filled with awe. “You’re not real,
right?”

“I’m real,” Megan said.

The girl plucked at Megan’s shirt.
Megan suddenly wished she had worn a suit or several leather
jackets piled one on top of the other.

No one had told her this would involve
touching. Or plucking. Or that glassy-eyed stare.

“Wow,” the girl said, ever so softly.
“Wow.”

The kitchen door banged open, and a
willowy man with a goatee and the same black hair as the girl
peered out. “Brooke? Is something wrong? I heard the
tray…”

And then he came out, a frown on his
upswept features.

“What’s this?” he asked as he
approached Megan.

The little old ladies had
given up on discretion. They were grabbing cigarette packs and
shoving them in purses the size of the Hindenburg.

The two Faeries didn’t
seem to care.

“I thought you people were legends,”
he said softly. “I never thought I’d see one of you in real
life.”

This
was real life? Megan preferred her own, even with
the psychology practice that she was shutting down. Given her
choice, she’d be back in her office at this moment, facing very
wealthy, very screwed up, irate parents who had huge trouble
accepting responsibility for any one of their
actions.

The new Faerie plucked at
the same sleeve the cigarette girl kept touching.

“Wow,” he said with just the same
measure of awe. “Wow.”

“Chauncey!” a voice bellowed from the
kitchen. “Hey, Chauncey, where in the six woods are
you?”

The kitchen door opened a third time,
and a squarely built man — similar upswept features, same black
hair — came out. He was wearing a chef’s apron that looked like it
hadn’t been cleaned since…well, since time began.

“Hey, Chaunce…”

Then the familiar glazing began, and
this guy got a goofy smile. The smile freaked Megan out more than
the rest of it did.

She wished she had thought
through her side of the plan better. She should have gotten a table
in the center of the room, so that she had an open side, rather
than a table against the wall, with nowhere for these freaky
Faeries to go.

Others were coming in the main door,
their eyes glazing as soon as they saw her. Or was it just because
they were in her proximity?

She didn’t know, didn’t
want to know. She did want to know if Faeries could be held back
with lime JELL-O. Or with congealed roast beef.

She hadn’t taken enough burnt coffee,
and it wasn’t hot enough to do real damage.

Zoe wanted her to stay here until the
mission was over?

That would take all of
Megan’s considerable strength. There were at least twenty Faeries
in her vicinity, and more on the way.

The blue-haired old ladies
were scurrying from the dining room. The obese kid set his food
down and scurried after them. Only the elderly man continued to
watch, as if he had never seen anything like it before.

Well, Megan hadn’t either and she was
part of it. And what was really creepy was they all repeated the
same words, and then ended with “Wow,” like she was the Queen of
England or Brad Pitt or something.

Maybe, in Faerie World,
she was the equivalent of Brad Pitt. Or the Queen. If she had a
choice, she’d be the Faerie equivalent of Julia Roberts.

Megan carefully set down
her fork—she had been clutching it—and pushed her plates away. The
Faeries were pressing against her table, but no one had taken the
seat opposite her.

It was almost as if they were afraid
to.

More and more came through the doors.
This place was getting packed.

With the low ceilings, lack of fans,
and no windows, there couldn’t be a lot of oxygen in this
place.

Did Faeries breathe
air?

Megan suddenly found herself hoping
they didn’t.

Because if they did, they were going
to use up all of hers.

She resisted the urge to look at her
watch, but she sent a mental message, one she knew wouldn’t get
through.

Hurry, Rob. Please. Just
hurry.

The Faeries were leaving,
marching away from their slot machines as if they’d received a
message from an unseen god. Rob had never seen anything quite like
it, and it unnerved him.

Even the Faerie who had
her arms around Travers excused herself.

“This’s big,” she said. “You guys
coming?”