Totally Spellbound (18 page)

Brittany wrapped a strand of gum
around her finger. “Maybe that’s why he put us here. So he could
really be a Fate without being a Fate, y’know?”

“It would give him a lot more power,”
Rob said.

Megan started. She had
clearly forgotten he was there. The three girls looked at him in
surprise as well.

Rob shrugged. “He would be making the
rules and enforcing them. They’d no longer be subject to
interpretation.”

“You say that like that’s not good,”
Tiffany said.

“Do you think it’s good?” Megan asked
in perfect shrink mode.

“Daddy can be—y’know—moody,” Crystal
said.

“He forgets sometimes that he said
something,” Brittany said.

“No, I don’t think it’s good.” Tiffany
tugged on her t-shirt, tucking it under her legs. “You said you
could help us.”

Megan nodded.

“But
he
said not to trust us.”
Crystal pointed at Rob.

He bristled. He wasn’t sure why.
“Actually, you said that she shouldn’t trust you.”

“Only after you did,” Brittany
said.

“But you were right.” Tiffany met his
gaze. She was stronger than she looked. He could actually see a bit
of Zeus in her—not in guile—it would take millennia for her to have
as much guile as Zeus—but in her native intelligence, and in her
initial reluctance to use it.

“I’m sure what I’m going
to propose will be difficult for you,” Megan said, “but I’ve been
in situations like this before—”

Rob snorted. He couldn’t help himself.
She had never been in a situation like this. Not unless she’d been
lying to him, and he knew she hadn’t been.

She glared at him, effectively
silencing him. Then she continued.

“As I said, I’ve been in situations
like this before, and I’ve found that if the children truly want
something, they’ll work at it, no matter how controlling the parent
is.”

It sounded so good, and it was so fill
of crap. Rob shook his head. Once again, Megan was spouting the
kind of psychobabble that had made parts of the last hundred years
living hell.

“You really think we can get out of
this?” Crystal asked.

“You really think we can stand up to
Daddy?” Brittany asked.

“You really think he won’t turn us
into warthogs for the rest of our lives?” Tiffany asked. Her tone
was as mocking as Rob’s mental tone had been.

Megan smiled at all three of them as
if Tiffany’s tone hadn’t bothered her at all.

“Yes,” she said, “I really think that.
If you all want this badly enough. Do you want to be the Fates for
the rest of your lives?”

“For the rest of our lives?” Crystal
asked.

“He said ‘interim,’” Brittany said. “I
looked it up—”

“Actually,
I
looked it up,” Tiffany
said.

“—
and it means
short-term,” Crystal finished. “Right?”

“That’s what I thought it said,”
Brittany said.

“That
is
what it said,” Tiffany
said. “I read it to you, remember?”

“Short-term means, like, a week,
right?” Crystal asked.

“Only it’s been longer than a week,”
Brittany said.

“A lot longer,” Tiffany
said.

Rob suppressed a sigh. These girls
were grating on his nerves.

But Megan seemed so serene, sitting on
that Astroturf and looking up at them as if she had no power in the
world, even though she was clearly controlling the
conversation.

What had the girls called her? An
empath?

An empath.

Empaths were rare. He’d only met one
other, in all of his years. Their magic was subtle, their overt
powers slight.

But their ability to control a room—if
they knew what they were doing—was phenomenal.

Megan was controlling this room even
though these girls created all kinds of chaos.

Megan. Not him. Not them.

Megan.

The one without any magic at
all.

He tilted his head slightly and
watched her. She seemed so at ease. She hadn’t seemed at ease when
she’d come to the office today. She had displayed a lot of
insecurity.

And when he first saw her inside his
bubble, she’d slapped herself to wake herself from the “dream.”
Certainly not the sign of a secure person either.

Her behavior here was so
very different from those other two behaviors. It was almost as if
this were a different Megan, one so confident that she could face
anything and find a solution.

“Did your father ever give you a time
limit on this?” she asked the girls softly.

“No,” Crystal said.

“Actually,” Brittany said, “he told a
lot of people that when this was all said and done, we’d be
Fates.”

“When what was all said and done?”
Megan asked.

“When he convinces the other Powers
That Be to forgo the application process,” Tiffany said, almost as
if she were repeating someone else’s words.

“The application process for being a
Fate, which was why the real Fates stepped down?” Rob
asked.

“They didn’t step on anything,”
Crystal said. “They had term limits.”

“Those were new. My daddy got the
Powers to agree to that,” Brittany said.

“On the condition that anyone could
apply,” Tiffany said. “Aphrodite pushed for that.”

“But Daddy convinced everybody that
those other Fates were doing a bad job,” Crystal said.

“They were,” Brittany said. “They let
some really mean people loose and stuff.”

“But they did better than we are.”
Tiffany swept her hand around the library. “They’d actually read
and understood all these books.’

“And remembered them,” Crystal
said.

“Tiffany can’t remember them,”
Brittany added.

“You can’t even read them,” Tiffany
said, and flounced back in her chair.

Rob wanted to grab each girl, tell her
to sit still and shut up, so that he could think. But Megan hadn’t
moved.

“But did your father ever say how long
you’d be Fates?” Megan asked.

“He said
interim
,” Crystal
said.

“That other stuff was just junk he
told other people,” Brittany added.

“Only now I believe it,” Tiffany
said.

“Me, too,” Crystal said.

“Me, too.” Brittany sniffled. “I don’t
wanna do this any more.”

Megan smiled softly. “All right,
honey. You’ve convinced me you’re sincere. And see? I didn’t even
need the magic.”

Brittany sniffled even louder. Rob
couldn’t take it anymore. He conjured a handkerchief and handed it
to her. She batted her wet eyelashes at him. She was flirting with
him. He shuddered.

He retreated to Megan’s side and sat
beside her. The Astroturf was hard and scratchy.

“Megan,” he said softly, “no matter
how much you want to help, we can’t take on Zeus.”

“I’m not asking you to,” she
said.

“You can’t do it without me,” he
said.

“Sure, I can.” She smiled, but there
was irritation in it.

“Honey, you have no idea—”

“Don’t ‘honey’ me,” she snapped. There
was the woman he had seen earlier. Not the serene one who’d been
talking to the girls. “Ever since we met, you’ve been taking
responsibility for me or apologizing for not doing it, as if I’m
some fragile example of femininity. I’m not. I can take on anyone I
please. These girls need help, and so do the Fates, and so,
apparently, does the group of people my brother’s involved with. I
know how to help everyone, with or without you.”

He gaped at her. He hadn’t expected
this.

The girls had all leaned forward as if
this conversation was a spectator sport. If they’d been actual
teenagers, he would have disappeared them—even for just a
moment.

But they weren’t. They were Interim
Fates—possibly the real Fates—and he couldn’t have a bad
relationship with yet another group of Fates. They might not be as
hands-off as the others had proven to be over the
centuries.

“You can leave if you want,” Megan
said. “In fact, why don’t you? You can come back for me in, say, an
hour.”

He wasn’t even breathing. He had to
remember to breathe. He made himself inhale, and he got slightly
dizzy.

What was she doing? Hadn’t she noticed
how he’d helped her? He’d explained the magic to her. He’d helped
her understand this new world she was in. He’d taken very good care
of her in the short time he had known her.

He stood up, and almost magicked
himself away, and then he heard Little John’s voice in his head.
John would deride him for leaving her, for abandoning yet another
chance.

And, honestly, he shouldn’t leave a
woman to face the wrath of Zeus alone.

Rob retreated to the bookshelf. He
resumed his laid-back posture, crossing his arms, and leaning his
head against the wood.

“I’m staying,” he said.

She frowned at him. The girls all
tilted their heads as if he were a new species.

“Continue your little discussion,” he
said. “I won’t interrupt anymore.”

“Yeah, right,” Tiffany
said.

“Like men can ever not interrupt,”
Crystal added.

“They always butt in,” Brittany
said.

Megan turned her back on
him.

He felt her rejection like a personal
loss.

Arrogant S.O.B. Who did he think he
was, anyway, standing against that bookshelf like he didn’t have a
care in the world?

Megan turned her back on him because
she couldn’t stand to look at him. He was a mixture of kindness,
arrogance, and old-fashioned medieval maleness, and she didn’t have
the time at the moment to sort through any of this.

She had to remain calm to make her
suggestion. She focused on the girls. They looked so young as they
stared at her; their faces covered with piercings and makeup in an
attempt to look older, only seemed even more vulnerable.

The bikinis, the lawn chairs, and the
Astroturf in the middle of their hated library didn’t help.
Obviously their controlling father had been trying to placate
them.

It hadn’t worked.

“All right,” she said. “You need to
listen to me for a moment, without interruption.”

She resisted the urge to turn and
glare at Rob, just to make her point. She had to forget he was
there.

As if that were possible.

“You girls don’t want to do this. You
were tricked into the position.”

All three girls nodded.

“Your father really wants to control
this himself, but the others in his group won’t let him, so he’s
manipulating the situation, and using you to do it, am I
right?”

Again, the girls nodded. Their eyes
were big, and their expressions were identical. Megan didn’t think
the three of them looked at all alike until this moment.

“You were tricked into taking this
job. The other three women, who had been the Fates, were tricked
into leaving it.”

The girls set their jaws in an
identical movement. Megan noted it. They obviously had mixed
feelings about the other Fates. She was glad she hadn’t called
those three adult women “The Fates.” It might have lost her
sympathy with these three.

“They would like the job back. You
would like to leave it. They lost their magic, and they need help
recovering it. Would you be willing to do the magic, under their
guidance, needed to—”

“No!”

That was Rob. Megan whirled. His hands
were fists.

“They will not do anything like that!”
He looked angry.

“We can help,” Crystal
said.

“We’d like to help,” Brittany
said.

“We can do the magic,” Tiffany said.
“With help, anyway.”

“They’ll be fine,” Megan
said.

“NO!” Rob was waving those clenched
fists. She wondered if he knew how ridiculous he looked.

Ridiculous and somehow gorgeous. Anger
looked good on him. Was that why history remembered him as a lord
who, out of anger, took on the entire establishment—and won (at
least for a while)?

“They won’t be fine. You
don’t know what you’re asking, Meg. The Fates need someone to go
into Faerie. Sending these infants into Faerie would be like
sending three mice into a pride of lions. You can’t do that. The
Faeries would steal their magic within five minutes and maybe take
their souls. And then what would their father do to you? You can’t.
You just can’t.”