Totally Spellbound (6 page)

“I do love you, kiddo. You’re the most
important person in my life.”

“I know,” Kyle said. “I’m really
lucky. I got you and Dad and Aunt Viv, and Gramma and Grandpa and
Bartholomew Fang, and the Fates. And you all think I’m
okay.”

But he didn’t name any friends from
school. No one outside his family, except the three strangest women
Megan had ever met in her life.

“They’re not
strange,” Kyle said. “I mean, they
are
strange, but they’re not really
strange if you know what they’ve been through. Like they gave up
magic to learn what life is really like, and they’ve had magic
since forever, and they even bossed the gods around, although that
didn’t pay off for them, not really, and—”

“We talked about some of this last
night.” Megan’s stomach growled. “How about talking some more over
breakfast, before it gets cold?”

“Okay.” Kyle eased out of her hug. He
looked toward the table and blanched. “Fang!”

The dog was in the center
of the table, munching at one of the plates as if it had been
placed there for him.

Megan looked at Kyle who
looked back at her. It felt like a Laurel and Hardy moment—if
either of them moved, something would go wrong: the dog would run
into the other plates, or it would pull the tablecloth off the
table, or it would throw up all over the waffles.

“Dad would get mad and throw
everything out,” Kyle said.

“Your dad’s right,” Megan said, “but
I’m hungry.”

She led Kyle to the table. The dog
kept eating, his stubby tail wagging. He had started with the
sausages, and they were mostly gone now, but the bacon remained,
along with the waffles and the eggs and some lovely looking
pastries.

Kyle picked up the dog
just like Megan had, wrapping his arm around the dog’s stomach, and
then grabbed the plate. He set dog and plate on the floor, and then
sat at the table.

Megan joined him and
grinned.

Kyle giggled.

Megan giggled, too, and
then they laughed as if this were the funniest thing that had ever
happened to them. It wasn’t, but it certainly showed Megan how
tense she had been during the last twenty-four hours.

“Imagine if your Dad had walked in on
that,” Megan said.

“He’d’ve been really mad,” Kyle
said.

“He’d’ve made some comment about how
non-parents don’t understand the needs of children—”

“And he would have been
right.”

Megan jumped at the new voice. It
belonged to Travers. He was standing at the door, a beautiful
raven-haired woman at his side.

Megan felt a surge of anger. It wasn’t
Travers’ comment so much as the fact that he had abandoned his
child for an entire night to three obviously incompetent women, not
knowing for sure when Megan would arrive.

And it was clear what he had been
doing. Her tall, slender, handsome brother looked like he’d been
kissed. Many times. His mouth was swollen, his eyes a bit glassy,
his blond hair mussed.

He looked…ruffled. She’d never seen
him look ruffled, not even with Kyle’s mother, way back when
Travers was a teenager.

“I know about kids, Travers,” Megan
snapped. “I specialize in kids.”

“You specialize in kid theory. You
should know better than to eat food that a dog has
touched.”

The raven-haired
woman put a manicured hand on his arm.
She
looked well kissed, too, and
Megan didn’t even know her. The woman was petite and stylish—black
clothes that would’ve been too tight on anyone with an ounce of
fat, a wedge cut hairdo that would have ruined any face except one
with wonderful angles, and boots, high-heeled boots that looked
like they had come off a movie set.

Megan hated women like
that.

“Give her a chance,” Kyle whispered,
which told Megan she’d been broadcasting again.

She hated the broadcasting
thing, too.

“You should know better than to leave
your son alone with three insane women,” she said

“Oh,” Travers said, shutting the front
door and coming into the suite. “You’ve met the Fates.”

“You call them the Fates,
too?”

He nodded. He had lipstick
on his chin. She hadn’t noticed that before. And some mud—at least
she hoped it was mud—on the front of his shirt.

She had never seen Travers look like
this.

“They are the Fates,” Travers said.
“They deserve the name.”

“What is this all about?” Megan said.
“Is this an elaborate practical joke? Let’s see how thoroughly we
can humiliate Megan? Is that what we’re doing?”

“No.” The woman spoke. She had a faint
accent—French?—and her voice was as sophisticated as the rest of
her.

She came all the way into the dining
room and extended that manicured hand toward Megan.

“I’m Zoe,” she said. “I’m very pleased
to meet you.”

Megan felt a momentary
sullenness. She didn’t want to take this woman’s hand. But that
would be rude, and Megan was never (well, not never as she had
recently learned, but rarely) rude.

Megan took her hand. It was smooth and
warm. “Megan.”

“Travers says nice things about you,”
Zoe said. “He’s a bit off balance right now.”

“He’s been off balance for days,” Kyle
said.

“I have not,” Travers said.

“Have too,” Kyle said.

“Have not,” Travers said.

“Have too.” Kyle crossed his
arms.

“Have not.”

Megan stared at her brother. He always
told her that adults who interacted childishly with their children
hurt their children. She had never heard this kind of interchange
between Travers and Kyle.

“Have too,” Kyle said.

Megan was feeling off balance as
well.

“This,” Zoe said loudly, obviously to
stop the fight, “is not a practical joke. There are just things
about the world that your family didn’t know. And now you’re
learning them, which can be hard.”

Hard. That was the understatement of
the year. If magic existed and Zoe was a witch (magician?) and Kyle
had psychic powers and the Fates had once been in charge of
everyone’s lives, then hard was nearly impossible.

Because it meant everything Megan had
learned was wrong.

Zoe was watching her sympathetically,
as if she understood what Megan was going through.

Megan felt a shiver of fear run
through her, and it startled her. She had expected upset and
discomfort, but not fear.

“You can’t read my mind too, can you?”
she asked Zoe. Suddenly the reason for her fear became
clear.

If magic existed, and everyone who had
it was psychic, then Megan’s privacy had been invaded all of her
life—it had been anyway, if Kyle was to be believed, first by her
sister Vivian, and now by her nephew—but that didn’t feel as
invasive as having some woman she just met, some woman who claimed
to love her brother, be able to know everything about her with just
a single thought.

“No,” Zoe said gently, “I can’t read
minds. Kyle is a special boy.”

She gave him a fond look.

Megan glanced at her
brother, who was staring at this woman with something like love.
Megan had seen a similar expression on her brother’s face
before—that adoration had been in his eyes when he had looked at
his newborn son—but this was something else, something passionate,
something not Travers.

Or not the Travers she had grown up
with.

Travers and passion weren’t two words
she had ever put together before.

“You know,” Kyle was saying to Zoe, “I
hate being called special. It makes me sound like there’s something
wrong with me.”

“I meant it as a compliment,” she
said.

“I know that,” Kyle said, but he still
looked grumpy.

And that was when the knot
in Megan’s stomach loosened ever so slightly. Because if Zoe had
really been psychic, she would have known that Kyle hated being
called special. He also hated “weird” and “unusual” and
“interesting.”

The dog climbed into Kyle’s lap and
inspected the table, his nose twitching. Megan looked at the food.
The eggs had congealed, the waffles looked soggy, and the coffee
was cold.

She sighed and reached for the orange
juice. Then she stopped, hand out, and contemplated
something.

“If you’re really magic,” she said to
Zoe, “prove it. Revive my breakfast.”

“Aunt Meg!” Kyle put a
hand in front of the dog’s snout, preventing him from eating a
strip of cold bacon off the plate. “You said you’d give her a
chance.”

“I am giving her a chance,” Megan
said.

“Revive it?” Travers said. “What are
you asking, Meg?”

Megan blinked at him. Then her stomach
rumbled. The smell of fresh bacon always did that to her, even if
she wasn’t hungry. Fresh bacon and fresh coffee—

She looked down. The
scrambled eggs were fluffy, with steam rising from them. The bacon
wasn’t just hot, it was also crisp, which was exactly how she liked
it. A new plate held sausages, cooked until they were shriveled and
perfect. And the waffles looked like they had just come out of the
waffle iron, little puffs of steam rising from their checkerboard
surfaces.

Megan raised her eyes slowly from the
food to Zoe.

Zoe smiled. “That’s what she meant,
Trav.”

He came to the table, put his arm
around Zoe, and then glared at Megan. “Magic has a cost, you know.
You just made her waste some on something trivial.”

“Da-ad.” Kyle was clutching the dog,
who was straining to reach the new plate of sausages. “Stop being
mean to Aunt Megan.”

“I didn’t know magic had costs,” Megan
said. “I didn’t even know it existed until a few hours
ago.”

She took a bite of the eggs. They were
extremely delicious, light and soft and warm, just the way she
liked them.

“This is really good,” she said. “How
much do I owe you for this magic?”

“That’s not the kind of cost I mean,”
Travers snapped just as Zoe said, “You don’t owe me
anything.”

“So what’s the cost?”
Megan kept her gaze on Zoe, deciding to pretend that Travers didn’t
exist. She used to do this when they were kids, and it always
irritated him.

“People who use too much magic age
quicker than those who use it sparingly,” Zoe said. “I don’t even
think you cost me an age spot. I wouldn’t worry about
it.”

“Age quicker? I thought
you lived forever. Kyle said you were a hundred or more and that
the Fates were thousands of years old.”

“They are,” Zoe said, “and I don’t
know if they age. But mages age. Just very, very slowly. Once we
hit our magic, that is. Until then we age like mortals.”

“Mortals.” The term sounded so
derisive. “If you age—and presumably die—then how come you call us
mortals?”

“I didn’t call you a
mortal,” Zoe said, and Travers gave her a sharp look. She ignored
it. “It’s just a custom. I think mages used to believe they were
immortal. But we’re not. Several thousand years is the longest I’ve
heard of anyone making it. Most only go for about three or so, max.
It’s tough to control your usage. I mean it’s really tempting to do
things—”

“Like fix breakfast.” Megan was
beginning to understand. And it bothered her. She was also
beginning to feel embarrassed about how rude she’d been. “How about
having some?”

“Don’t mind if I do,” Travers
said.

“I was asking Zoe,” Megan said. “Not
you.”

“Stop fighting,” Kyle said.
“Please.”

Megan looked at her nephew. His nose
was red, which had always been the first sign of tears. He looked
miserable.

Now she remembered why she had given
up sparring with her brother. It upset her nephew. It had upset him
from the moment he was born.

“I’m sorry, Kyle,” Megan said. “I
didn’t mean to upset you.”

He nodded, grabbed a slice
of bacon off his plate, and slipped it to the dog. Everyone saw the
movement, and no one complained about it.

“Have some breakfast, Trav,” Megan
said. “After all, you’re paying for it.”

“I have a hunch I’m going to pay for a
lot of things today,” he said and slipped into a chair.

But he didn’t look unhappy. He looked
like a man with a plan.

A plan that would probably make Megan
unhappy.

“Tell her, Dad,” Kyle said, still
feeding bacon to the dog.

“Huh?” Travers frowned at his
son.

“What you and Zoe just did.” Kyle
still wasn’t looking at him.

“I really don’t want to know that,”
Megan said. Besides, she could guess, considering how well kissed
each of them looked.

“You mean in Faerie?” Travers
asked.