Tiffany Tumbles: Book One of the Interim Fates (17 page)

Use the damn thing and forget about it. Which is what he wants. And then he’ll be back, meddling even more.

So I don’t have any options, except the one I’m just not strong enough to do: I can’t just ignore the magic. Because one day, I’ll say something dumb using that phrase which I can’t even think at the moment, at least not in order, but it’s a two word phrase with the words “wish” and “I” in it.

I’m trapped, trapped, trapped.

I close my eyes and think for a moment. The Powers control Daddy kinda, but he is a Power, so he’d know if I went to them. But the Powers listen to the Fates, and the Fates understand magic rules, and they’ll do what they think is best, and they can handle Daddy—and he won’t know if I went to see them or not because sometimes the Fates watch over stuff, just like the gods in those myths Mrs. Fiddler has us read.

The question is: can I get to the Fates without using the magic?

I sit up.

I have to try.

I walk over to that smoke stain, wondering if there’s even a trace of magic left in it. I touch it, and it vibrates. See? I remember some of my reading from Interim Fate days.

The vibration makes that spot on my leg ache. I lean as close to the smoke stain as I can, and say, “Fates, if you can hear me, I need help. I need to see you. Please? I’m asking as a former (and repentant) Interim Fate. Please?”

And before I get out the last please, the smoke stain disappears. I’m in a wall of white, and I feel dizzy. Transporting has never made me feel dizzy before.

But I’ve never done it without magic before—letting someone else control it.

I breathe as best I can, and suddenly I’m tumbling onto a marble floor—which knocks my breath out of my chest, but doesn’t really hurt me.

I slide forward and stop, right in front of a spa. There’s a swimming pool beside me, with a waterfall tumbling into it from outside. The ceiling overhead is blue, with painted clouds and stars and some kind of ambient light that makes it look like the sun is shining even though it’s not.

As I get my breath back, I realize that I have skinned my elbows. They burn just a little, but that spot on my calf burns more.

I sit up, and there they are—all three Fates, looking pretty and powerful…and naked.

They look at me and grin in unison.

And suddenly, I’m very, very scared.

FIFTEEN

AND WHY SHOULDN’T
I be scared? Here I am, lying on the floor of a spa, in some place—any place, maybe even a place out of time—with three of the most powerful women who’ve ever lived.
And
to make things worse, I helped Daddy betray them. He convinced the Powers that the Fates were screwing up, made them reapply for their own jobs, tried to impose term limits, of all things, and somehow convinced them to give up their powers and live among mortals for a while. (Hmm, sounds familiar…except that Daddy opposed us girls doing it. The giving up powers/living among mortals part, anyway.)

In the meantime, me, Brittany, and Crystal took their places—without the thousands of years of knowledge or a clue about the overall grand scheme or any real help from Daddy or the Powers.

But we did relinquish the Fateness, and it was my idea. Well,
our
idea.

And Megan helped.

Still, the Fates are scary. I mean—they’ve been at this since the beginning of time—maybe literally—and some say they have the power of good and evil at their fingertips. But from the books I read, and what Megan says, and what the Fates really claim, their biggest task is to protect True Love.

Which is why Daddy really wanted to get rid of them. He doesn’t believe in True Love. Not that I blame him. Who would, married to Hera?

Anyway, the Fates don’t look anything like the mythology pictures that Mrs. Fiddler passed out one day in class. Those women are wearing long, old-fashioned Greek robes and look—I dunno—classic. But in real life, they’re pretty and, like I said, naked.

Clotho—who in that picture is holding the spinning wheel from which they
used
to get their powers (they got stronger over the years and no longer need it)—has a green beauty mask all over her face. She looks like a grown-up version of Brittany—all blonde and skinny. She grabs a towel and wipes off her face,
The better to see you, my pretty,
I think and then regret, because sometimes the Fates can hear thoughts (if they want to. I’m hoping that at the moment, they don’t want to).

Lachesis—who according to that silly drawing is supposed to give people their destinies at birth (The Disposer of Lots, the picture said)—is tall and heavy and redheaded, Rubenesque, Mom would say, even though I still don’t know why being heavy is called that. Lachesis wiped off her white beauty mask and is glaring at me with those green eyes that are uncannily like Crystal’s. She and Crystal share red hair, and I’m beginning to wonder if maybe Daddy picked the three of us just because we’re blonde, brunette, and redheaded like the real Fates and we’re close in age.

Which would mean that Atropos is my counterpart. In the drawing, she’s got a pair of scissors in her hand because she cuts the thread of life. Mortals think she ends their life—or used to think it, when they believed Fates were gods. But they’re not. Gods, I mean. They are really powerful mages from the beginning of time, and they do have some remarkable abilities.

As for power over death, yeah, sure, I suppose. A little. But I never had that responsibility—or if I did, I didn’t know it.

Atropos’s eyes are dark and so is her hair, but her skin isn’t. That’s where we differ.

That and our ages, of course.

“So,” Clotho says, “you say you need us.”

“You realize,” Lachesis says, “that throwing yourself at the feet of the court isn’t always a good idea.”

The other thing I didn’t mention—which is part of the Fate destiny or whatever (it happened to me, Brit, and Crystal too) is that the Fates must speak in a particular order. When they got back to power, the order reestablished itself as Clotho first, Lachesis second, and Atropos third.

So I just look at Atropos. She’s going to speak next, whether she wants to or not.

But she doesn’t say anything. I guess in the scheme of things,
I’m
supposed to speak next—and tell them why I’m here.

“I need your help,” I say.

“The entire world needs our help,” Atropos says. “We usually decline, unless it has something to do with destinies and love.”

“You’re too young to worry about true love,” Clotho says.

“In fact, if you fall in love now,” Lachesis says, “it won’t be true.”

I sit up and cross my legs, ignoring the burning in my elbows and calf. The air smells of sulfur and is waaaay too hot. But it’s a spa, and apparently a natural one.

The Fates line up on one side of their pool and stare at me. The staring makes me even more frightened, and that’s probably why they’re doing it.

Since they’ve come back into power, they’ve decided to use it more. Or so it seems to me, not that I have a lot to base anything on. I mean, I never met them before I took over their job (that I remember) and then afterward, they were more concerned with repairing the mess that Crystal, Brittany, and I made than with us in particular. In fact, even though they wanted some kind of action, they really didn’t blame us much at all.

They barely noticed us.

“I’m not here about love,” I say. “I’m here about Daddy.”

All three Fates sigh as if I’ve brought a bad smell into the room. Maybe I have. After all, it’s Daddy who has been trying to defeat them all these years. They probably hate him.

And for that reason alone, I probably shouldn’t’ve come.

“What has he done this time?” Clotho asks.

“We shouldn’t ask the child to tell on her father,” Lachesis says softly.

Atropos makes a rude noise. “The child came here to tell on her father. Let her talk.”

Clotho peels a long strand of green mask off the side of her face. “I would rather get back to relaxing. Can we hurry this along?”

She looks at me.

I shrug. “I’ll talk as fast as I can.”

“Better yet,” Lachesis says, “give us the setup.”

“We’ll divine the rest,” Atropos says with something like a sneer.

So I remind them about me and Brittany and Crystal giving up our magic and going to live with our mothers.

Clotho says to the others, “Really, we should have come up with a better solution.”

“It wasn’t our solution,” Lachesis says.

“You girls claimed you wanted it,” Atropos says. She seems kinda hostile to me. The other two seem to take me in stride, but Atropos glares at me the whole time.

Does she feel like I took her job—
hers
and not theirs? Because I didn’t even know the job I had was hers until now. Maybe I should say something.

I grab my ankles and lean forward, about to say just that, when Clotho snaps, “Setup, remember?”

“Yeah,” I say, and then I tell them about my promise not to think about magic and how we’re trying to be normal mortals, and how we’re not supposed to have contact with each other except on Saturday—

“
That’s
a silly rule,” Lachesis mutters.

“Let the girl finish,” Atropos snaps.

—and how Daddy can’t see us at all because he interferes. Then I get to the part where he magically appears today, and as I start to tell them about it, Clotho waves a hand.

“We’ll watch from here,” she says.

So for the second time in a single afternoon, I watch myself live a part of my life. Then I watch me watching my baby self and I begin to feel really dizzy. It’s like looking through a series of mirrors, only instead of getting a clear sense of myself, I get no real sense at all.

But the Fates stare with great fascination. After the whole flashback within a flashback happens (Mrs. Fiddler would be proud of me, remembering and illustrating that term [although probably not in any way she ever imagined]), Lachesis waves an arm and the action freezes.

“Your father does realize how badly he comes across, doesn’t he?” she asks.

“Oh, puh-leeze,” Atropos says in a good imitation of me (at least, I think she’s imitating me. She can’t be imitating Alicia Silverstone [my heroine] from
Clueless
, can she? Can she? Jeez, that freaks me out even worse).

“It’s Zeus,” Clotho says. “He just wanted the child. He wants her to know he wants her, even though he treated her mother shabbily. He assumes her loyalty is with him, not with her mother, and he might be right.”

I don’t like being discussed like I’m not there. “My mom is cool,” I say, even if that’s not entirely true. I mean, she’s cool for a mom. And I’m starting to feel sorry for her.

“Besides,” Lachesis says as if I haven’t spoken, “Zeus really doesn’t care about what other people think. He only cares about what he wants.”

“Strange that he always wants his children, and then doesn’t seem to do a good job of raising them.” Atropos looks at me when she says that. She’s trying to make me mad, and it’s working.

“I
know
all that,” I say, even though it’s nice to hear some of my suppositions confirmed. “I’m not here because Daddy came to see me or because he showed me what he did to Mom.”

All three Fates look at me. Blue, green, and black eyes—all focused on me. I can feel that silly blush rising, and I almost,
almost,
waste a wish on getting rid of it.

But I don’t.

Not yet.

“I’m here,” I say a little softer, “because of what he did after.”

“After?” Clotho asks as if she doesn’t want to know.

“After he showed me all that stuff,” I say, and I’m about to tell them when Lachesis waves her arm again, and the scene starts up, like a movie just taken off of pause. I didn’t know you could do that with real life—or at least, with real life memories—which might’ve made my life easier (just a little) when I was an Interim Fate.

Anyway, this time, I stare at the Fates, not at me. (Besides, I could’ve combed my hair and my shirt is wrinkled in the back [which makes me tug it down now and run a hand through my hair] and I look kinda dorky even though I didn’t mean to. Who wants to watch dorky?) They’re watching pretty intently, and then when I tell Daddy off—or kinda tell him off—Lachesis actually applauds.

Clotho frowns at her, and Atropos frowns at me. My stomach turns. That queasiness is back.

Then, finally, we get to the drop of magic part, and that’s when I say, “That’s what I’m here about. I’m not supposed to have magic.”

Lachesis snaps her finger and the image of me (just me by then) disappears. She gives me a sad look. “Your father is a master manipulator.”

“And he has violated I don’t know how many rules,” Atropos says.

“He’s not supposed to present himself to mortals anymore,” Clotho says.

“We’ll have to take this up with the Powers, since he’s out of our sentencing purview,” Lachesis says.