Totally Spellbound (7 page)

Whatever he wanted to call it, Megan
thought but didn’t say.

“No.” Kyle finally looked up, his
frown matching his father’s.

“He knows,” Zoe said to
Travers.

“Oh.” Travers’ eyes widened. “I’m
never going to get used to the psychic thing. Sometimes I think it
was better when I didn’t know.”

Kyle’s cheeks reddened. He had clearly
taken that badly. “I can’t shut it off.”

“I know,” Travers said, and
sighed.

“We should really discuss that,” Megan
said. “If Kyle has truly been able to read adult thoughts since he
was pre-verbal, then he might have some issues—”

“I don’t have issues,” Kyle said. He
grabbed another piece of bacon, and this time, he ate it. Fang put
his paws on Kyle’s lap, his nose pointing upward, his little tail
pinwheeling. “Dad, just tell her what’s going on.”

Travers glanced at Megan, then at
Kyle. Then back at Megan. “You’re right,” he said. “I’ve been
meaning to deal with it since I found out about it. It’s just been
so crazy here.”

“In a good way, I hope,” Zoe said with
a smile.

Megan frowned. What she had seen in
the last few hours hadn’t been all that good.

“I’m sure you can help him during the
next few days,” Travers said.

Megan stiffened. She had a hunch she
wasn’t going to like what was coming next. “The next few
days?”

“Zoe and I are getting married, and
then we’d like a few days to ourselves. Can you stay? We’d really
like to get this over with—”

“Such a romantic,” Zoe said with a
smile.

“You’re the one who said Elvis chapel
and black roses,” Travers said.

She shrugged. “And I meant it
too.”

“Mom and Dad won’t like that,” Megan
said.

“They didn’t like it when I got
married the first time,” Travers said.

“And they were right,” Megan
said.

“What I mean is that they had the big
wedding with me and Cheryl, and look what good it got
us.”

Kyle’s cheeks got even
redder.

“I think it got you a lot of good,”
Megan said, looking pointedly at Kyle.

Travers reached over and
put a hand on his son’s shoulder. “I just meant me and your mom,
Kyle. You know you’re the most important person in my
life.”

Kyle nodded, but his gaze didn’t meet
his father’s. “I would much rather have Zoe for a mom anyway,” Kyle
said bravely.

Of course he would. Cheryl
hadn’t been a mother at all. She had had dreams of home and family,
but when the realities had hit her—the tiny apartment, the lack of
money, the fussy baby—she had fled, leaving Travers to raise Kyle
alone.

Megan had disliked Cheryl
even before Travers had married her. Cheryl had seemed shallow to
her, almost emotionless. Megan had somehow known from the moment
she had seen her how much Cheryl would hurt her brother.

Megan looked at Zoe. She liked Zoe,
even though she wasn’t sure she wanted to.

And her brother was
clearly head over heels in love with her.

“Kyle,” Zoe said, “I’m not sure it’s
right that we cut you out of the honeymoon. I mean, you’re going to
be a big part of this relationship, and maybe—”

“Go along on a trip where you’re
supposed to just have sex and junk?” Kyle wrinkled his nose. “I
don’t think so.”

“I didn’t mean that you’d be around
for the private parts,” Zoe said, digging herself in deeper. “I
just meant maybe we should rethink the honeymoon part, and take a
family trip. It’d be fairer. After all, this is a surprise for you
too.”

“No, it’s not,” Kyle said.

“We didn’t know until a few minutes
ago,” Travers said.

“You knew from the minute you met,”
Kyle said. “You were just scared, that’s all.”

He sounded contemptuous, and
oh-so-much-older than he really was. He also sounded like a little
boy who was trying to be strong for the adults around
him.

Megan’s heart went out to him. “Of
course I’ll stay with Kyle while you two go off and have sex and
junk.”

Travers glared at her, but Zoe gave
her a fond smile.

“And I think I understand why you want
to avoid the big wedding. But wouldn’t it be nice to wait a few
days so that the whole family can come? I think Mom and Dad would
like it, and I’m sure Zoe has family who would want to be
here.”

“No,” Zoe said softly, “I don’t. But
there are a few friends that I wouldn’t mind asking.”

Travers looked at her with surprise.
“I’m sorry. I just assumed that we’d do this fast. You said Elvis
chapel.”

Zoe smiled at him, and the
smile was still fond. Megan would have been ripping his eyes out.
Of course, that could be because he was her brother and not the guy
she wanted to spend happily ever after with.

“I think fast is good,” Zoe said. “But
it wouldn’t hurt to give family and friends a day or two to get
here. Then maybe we could find someone to care for Kyle if Megan
can’t. I mean, you didn’t really ask her. You sort of demanded, and
she has a job, right, Megan?”

“Actually.” Megan poured herself a cup
of coffee. “Not exactly. Not anymore.”

“You finally shut down the practice?”
Travers asked.

She nodded. She didn’t even feel sad
about it, even though she should have. She just had a few loose
ends to wrap up, and those wouldn’t take much effort.

“Good,” he said. “Those rich kids
weren’t your style anyway.”

“Those rich kids need good
old-fashioned discipline, and parents who are home most of the
time,” Megan said. “They are overindulged and
underloved.”

Then she realized how harsh she
sounded. Everyone stared at her with surprise. Except Travers, who
was smiling at her. Fondly.

Where was all this fondness coming
from?

“Guess you could say I’m burned out,”
Megan said.

“I’m a rich kid,” Kyle said, “and I’m
not overindulged.”

“Or underloved,” Travers
said.

“And you’re not taking Ritalin or
Prozac or a host of other psychotropic medications for conditions
that have nothing to do with medicine and everything to do with
convenience,” Megan said. “You should have heard some parents when
I suggested taking their kid off antidepressants, and figuring out
what was really going on. It was like I’d suggested shooting them
or something.”

“Sounds like they need you,” Zoe said
softly.

Megan shook her head. “I didn’t make a
difference. They’d just take the poor child elsewhere.”

“That’s what you want?” Zoe asked. “To
make a difference?”

“Isn’t that what we all want?” Megan
asked.

“Not in the same way, Aunt Meg,” Kyle
said. “You want to save the world.”

“One child at a time,” Travers added.
“Mind starting with mine? He’s gonna need company for a week, maybe
more. How’s a week, Zoe?”

She grinned at him. “I think it’ll
do.”

“Do you know how impossible it will be
to find this woman?” John Little asked over lunch.

Rob sat across from him,
two plates loaded with meats and breads and salads spread before
him. He had loved buffets since learning about them in Vegas in the
1940s. He’d been one of the first and best customers of Beldon
Katleman’s Midnight Chuck Wagon Buffet at the original El Rancho
Vegas Hotel. Now, of course, buffets cost more than a dollar, they
were open for 24 hours instead of the few hours after the last
entertainment show, and they had a wide variety of cuisines—not
just steak and mashed potatoes and the occasional
carrot.

But the food made him
nostalgic for the Vegas he had lost, a place of clear skies and
such corruption that no one realized honest businessmen could
thrive here, too.

This buffet, in one of the downtown
hotels, looked nothing like that old one. There were plants
everywhere that blocked the patrons from each other. The only time
you saw someone else was when you got up to stand in
line.

“I’m not talking about the woman
anymore.” Rob had two different kinds of mashed potatoes on his
plate: regular (with lumps) and garlic. Maybe he hadn’t changed as
much as he thought.

John had three plates, all
of them covered with various meats—steak, brisket, roast beef,
chicken, ham, and several things that Rob couldn’t immediately
identify.

He wondered if the Atkins Diet meant
you could eat as much meat as you wanted all the time or if John
was ignoring some of the more important precepts.

“Listen, my friend,” John said.
“You’ve been getting more and more morose as the years have gone
on, and you were never a happy-go-lucky guy in the first
place.”

“My friends were called merry.” Rob
ate a cherry tomato, surprised at its freshness.

“In marked contrast to
you. If you’d have had your way, you’d have talked about poverty
and Good King John and the evils of government until the wee hours.
The only reason we laughed back then was because of Friar Tuck,
young Will, and yours truly.”

Rob sighed. “I suppose all our success
in those days came from that lack of seriousness as
well.”

“No need to be snide.”
John ripped the flesh off a chicken leg. In that moment, with that
movement, he looked like an old king—the kind Rob had always
opposed—not King John the Pretender, however; more like King Henry
the Eighth, a gluttonous, ruinous king if there had ever been
one.

“Look,” Rob said, “we have a lot more
important things to do than think about some woman I’m never going
to see again.”

“I think we need to think
about her.” John picked up a second chicken leg. The first one,
reduced to bone, had gone onto a plate John used only for discards.
“If we don’t think about her, you’ll miss the first chance you’ve
had in decades, maybe centuries. And I, as a good friend and boon
companion, can’t allow that to happen.”

“Why?” Rob asked, not sure if he cared
about the answer.

“Why?” John waved the chicken leg as
if it were a pointer and he was a professor giving a lecture. “Why?
Because I’m the person who spends the most time with you. And it’s
been a long, long time since someone has challenged
you.”

“How do you know this woman would
challenge me?” Rob found more cherry tomatoes buried on his plate.
He set them aside. They all looked as fresh and good as the first
one.

“Because,” John said, “she already
has.”

Rob looked up. John’s
mouth was smeared with barbecue sauce, and the chicken leg was half
gone. John grinned at him like a little boy who’d just won a long
argument.

“Being in that bubble was not a
challenge,” Rob said. “It was an accident, I’m sure. I’m sure I
built the thing wrong—”

“After doing it for
hundreds of years? Not likely.” John gnawed the last of the flesh
off the chicken bone, then set it on top of the other. If he
remained true to form, he would make a small sculpture out of the
remains of his food before the meal was done.

“Let it go,” Rob said.

John shook his head. “I’ve been
puzzling over this all morning.”

“I don’t pay you to think about women
on company time,” Rob said.

“You don’t pay me,” John said. “We’re
partners, and I can do whatever I damn well please. I probably
should be in Ethiopia right now, overseeing the new vaccination
program, but I’m tired of watching children getting stuck with
needles. I need a new focus, and I’ve decided that’s
you.”

“Lucky me,” Rob muttered.

“Look, we have lackeys to oversee all
the various giveaways and training programs and medical camps. I’ve
done some of this stuff for nearly five hundred years. A man needs
a break now and then.”

“So you’re focusing on my love life
because you’re bored,” Rob said.

“Your love life?” John’s eyebrows went
up. “Now that’s a phrase I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use.
And, oddly enough, I hadn’t used that phrase in this context
either.”

Rob finished the cherry tomatoes. The
rest of the lunch looked like overkill. What had he been thinking,
getting this much food?

He always felt a little discouraged
when he was done with a buffet. So much went to waste when so many
people went hungry.

He shook his head.

“And thinking about the poor
unfortunates isn’t going to get you off the hook
either.”

Rob raised his head, feeling slightly
surprised that John had read him that well.

“Sometimes people need to spread out,
do something new, get a different perspective. You’re running on
fumes, Rob.” John grabbed a napkin and wiped off his mouth. “So the
woman’s a distraction, but she’s a good one.”

“Who’s impossible to find, according
to you.”

John shrugged. “If we keep our vow and
only use our magic for work-related things.”