Totally Spellbound (30 page)

“Huh?” Zoe said, twisting her new
engagement ring.

Rob suppressed a grin, although
Travers looked alarmed. Megan had leaned against Rob’s leg,
watching the entire proceeding as if it were being staged for her
benefit.

Rob wished he could remain as
detached. He had to bring everyone back to the real topic soon
enough.

Clotho reached over and patted Zoe’s
leg. “It’s not that married women are unhappy, dear.”

“It’s just that occasionally Hera
sends a little discontent their way,” Lachesis said.

“Simply to stir things up,” Atropos
said.

“She believes it brings passion to a
relationship,” Clotho said.

“And it does,” Lachesis said, “but the
wrong type.”

“Why haven’t you stopped her?” Megan
asked.

All three Fates turned toward her.
Even Zoe looked shocked.

Megan shrugged and
extended her hands. Rob put his hand on her shoulder, leaning her
back against him.

“I misunderstood something again,
didn’t I?” she asked.

“Hera’s one of the Powers That Be,”
Rob said. “Technically, they’re the Fates’ boss.”

“Although I note you don’t
give them obeisance any more,” Zoe said to the Fates.

The Fates looked down at their hands.
This was the moment, then, that Rob could turn the conversation
back to his so-called heist. They had to know that this wouldn’t
work. Why were they sacrificing him?

“Are you trying to kill Mr. Hood?”
Kyle asked.

Rob glared at him, then cursed
silently. He must have broadcast that last thought.

Everyone looked at Kyle. He was
staring at the Fates.

“That’s what he thinks. He thinks
you’re sending him in there so that the Faerie Kings’ll catch him
and hurt him. He thinks you don’t like him.” Kyle sounded
indignant. “You should be nicer to him. He’s in love with my Aunt
Megan, and she needs someone like him, someone who really loves
her. She’s the nicest person I know, and she gets all the bad
breaks—”

“Kyle!” Megan hissed at
him.

“We don’t hate Robin,” Atropos said,
sounding shocked.

“We consider him one of the good
guys,” Clotho said, sounding even more shocked.

“We have asked him to be our
champion,” Lachesis said. “We only do that with the best of the
best.”

“Well,” Rob said, “I’m flattered,
ladies, but I really am the wrong man for the job. Maybe you
shouldn’t look for a champion and a good guy, but for someone
slightly shady, someone who can actually pull this off—”

“You know, I never thought
I’d hear that kind of nonsense coming out of you.” John spoke up.
He was standing near the kitchen door and looking very disgusted.
“Not the man for the job, ‘someone slightly shady’—what the heck do
you think you are? Mr. Clean? Rob, you still steal from the rich
and give to the poor. The only difference now is that they pretend
to like what you’re doing.”

Rob’s cheeks grew warm. “I’ve learned
a few tricks.”

“You
are
more than slightly
shady,” John said. “You always have been. And you’re tough, and you
have a lot of magic. You’ve just forgotten who you
are.”

Megan frowned. Rob glanced sideways at
his best and oldest friend.

“What are you referring to?” he asked.
“I’m a lot of things. I’m a displaced lord, a retired highwayman, a
former Crusader, a widower, a billionaire playboy,
and—apparently—someone slightly shady. What else?”

“For heavens’ sake, man,” John said.
“You’re not just those things. You are a hero and a champion just
like the Fates say. And you’re a leader of men. You always have
been.”

Robin shook his head. “If there’s
anything I’m not, it’s a leader of men, John. I’ve fought those
creatures.”

“No, sir,” John said.
“You’ve led me and Will Scarlet and Friar Tuck and dozens of
others. You’ve led regimens and corporations. You’re a leader,
Robin, and you always have been. All you need is the modern
equivalent of the Merry Men.”

Robin should have thought of that all
on his own. He leaned back in his chair, Megan still touching his
side, everyone in the room staring at him.

He had been the one who had been
approaching this as if he had to go in alone, and he hadn’t thought
of his usual team. Of course, everyone from his usual team—with the
exception of John Little—had been dead a very, very long
time.

Rob rubbed a hand over his face,
mostly so that he had something to do so that he wouldn’t have to
look at the Fates. He could still feel them, though, staring at him
expectantly.

They thought life and death rested on
this. They did say politics was involved (and that was pretty
plain, now that he thought about it), and they claimed they needed
a champion, not that he really wanted to champion those
women.

But he could champion Zeus’
daughters—not for their own sake, of course, but for Megan’s. She
really believed in him.

She was gazing at him
fondly, as if she was already a step ahead of him. And of course it
made sense that in this, she would be. It had to do with emotion,
which was her forte. At the moment, it certainly wasn’t
his.

“So how do you suggest I
recruit these men?” he asked John. “There aren’t any forests around
Las Vegas. And I have a hunch that if I walk around the city
looking for enemies of the Faerie Kings, most people will think I’m
referring to a rock band.”

John was glaring at Rob as if he were
particularly obtuse. Then he shook his head. “I’m putting food on
the table. If no one wants to eat, fine. I’ll eat it all myself.
But you’re welcome to join me if you want.”

He stomped into the
kitchen.

“What did I say?” Rob
asked.

Megan smiled at him. Her smile was
gentle. “You’ve already recruited.”

“Technically,” Travers said, “Rob was
recruited.”

“Into a preexisting band,” Zoe
said.

“I thought you guys were out of this
because of your wedding,” Rob said.

“We have planning to do, that’s true,”
Travers said.

“But we got our license.” Zoe smiled
at Travers. There was deep love in that gaze. It made Rob smile,
even though he hadn’t felt much like smiling in the last few
hours.

“Travers and Zoe aren’t the central
focus, but you do need a team,” Clotho said.

“We expected you to get one,” Lachesis
said.

“And John Little is right. You have
already one,” Atropos said.

John walked past them, carrying a
steaming pot of chili. Kyle got up and headed for the table,
grabbing a trivet off a nearby table on the way.

“I don’t see how Travers, Zoe, and
John are a band,” Megan said. “You had more than that initially,
didn’t you?”

That question was aimed at
Rob. He was watching John and Kyle, and noticing how well they
worked together.

“Yeah,” Rob said, feeling distracted.
A plan was coming together in his head whether he wanted it to or
not.

“Won’t it take more than four people
to take on an entire kingdom? I mean, you had more to go after a
sheriff.”

“He was in the pocket of the
Pretender, King John,” Little John said as he marched back through
the living room. “You people gonna eat or what?”

The Fates all stood up. Kyle was
already at the table, fending off the obese dog. Travers stood, and
extended a hand to Zoe, who took it.

“Why aren’t you participating in your
own rescue?” Rob asked the Fates.

They smiled prettily at him, and
oddly, not a one answered.

John came back through, this time
carrying fresh baked bread. Everything smelled heavenly.

Rob’s stomach rumbled again. He stood,
and took Megan’s hand. She squeezed his.

“I wish I could help,” she said
softly.

“Oh, but that’s part of the plan,
dear,” Clotho said from the table. She had sat beside Kyle and was
petting that misnamed dog.

Rob frowned at her. “Megan can’t go
near Faerie, and you know it.”

“We know nothing of the
kind,” Lachesis said, sitting on Kyle’s other side. Didn’t that
make the poor kid nervous? It would have made Rob nervous, and he’d
known these women for centuries.

“Why can’t I go with you?” Megan
asked. “Surely there’s something a mere mortal can do.”

“You’re not a mere mortal, dear,”
Atropos said. She sat beside Lachesis and reached for the bread
without waiting for the others to get to the table. “Whoever told
you that is just wrong.”

Megan let go of Rob’s hand, although
he kept holding hers. Her fingers were limp in his hand, but he
didn’t let go. He was almost afraid to.

She didn’t need to learn about her
skills like this. He made a small gesture with his free hand, but
no one seemed to see it.

Travers sat next to Clotho, and Zoe
sat beside him, which put her at the head of the table.

“No one told me I’m a mere mortal,”
Megan said as she slipped her hand from Rob’s grasp. She headed for
Zoe’s free side. “I figured that one out on my own.”

Rob stopped, clenched his now-empty
hand into a fist, and then walked a bit more slowly to the
table.

Travers was looking at Megan as if
he’d never seen her before. “You know, the more I’m learning about
Great-Aunt Eugenia and our entire family, the more I’m thinking
maybe the Fates are right.”

“Of course we’re right,” Clotho
said.

“Have we ever been wrong?” Lachesis
asked.

“You dumped your magic for a really
dumb reason,” Kyle said.

All three Fates glared at him. Rob’s
breath caught. If they still had magic, Kyle would be a toad
now.

“I agree with Kyle,” John said, coming
in from the kitchen again, carrying butter and some Tabasco sauce.
He sat down at the foot of the table, leaving the chair next to
Megan open. “You guys really let Zeus pull one over on
you.”

“We…” The Fates all started that
sentence in unison, then looked at each other and
sighed.

“We know,” Atropos finished for them.
“You have no idea how embarrassing it all is.”

“I know how dangerous it is,” Travers
said. “I’m not letting Zoe go back into Faerie, no matter what’s at
stake.”

“Like you’re in control of me,” Zoe
said.

He looked at her. “Are you going back
in?”

“Are you crazy?” she said. “I didn’t
want to go in the first time.”

Rob shook his head. He sat down next
to Megan. John was already ladling the chili into bowls. It was
thick and dark red, filled with beans and big hunks of roast beef,
just like John’s chili always was.

Rob’s mouth actually watered. He
hadn’t had this in so long, and it was one of his favorite
meals.

“I can’t go in with a skeleton team,”
Rob said. “I’d need Travers to guide me to that wheel, and I’m
going to need John’s help to get it out.”

“Wait,” Megan said. “I’m still not
sure what you all mean by the fact that I’m not mortal. I don’t
have magic.”

“Women come into their magic after,
y’know, menopause, Aunt Megan,” Kyle said, his face as red as the
chili. “Didn’t anyone tell you that?”

“You haven’t come into your powers
yet?” Travers asked. “That’s why you never turned me into stone
like you always threatened.”

“She’s got her powers,” Clotho said.
“You all have never noticed.”

“I noticed,” Rob said.

“We know.” Lachesis waggled a finger
at him. “And thank heavens you’re soulmates, or you would get a
lecture on using her talents to your advantage.”

Rob felt fear rise in his stomach. He
didn’t want Megan to find out this way. “I didn’t—”

“What’s she talking about?” Megan
asked.

“Darling,” Atropos said. “You’re the
rarest of the rare.”

“All of magic is only blessed with one
a generation,” Clotho said.

“If we’re lucky,” Lachesis
said.

“And no matter how hard they try,”
Atropos said, “not a single one has ever been born in
Faerie.”

Rob glanced at Zoe. He wanted her help
to stop this. But she was watching with fascination, and he
realized that she was such a young mage, she had probably never met
anyone like Megan before.

She had no idea what she was looking
at.

“One what?” Megan asked in
exasperation.

“You’re an empath, darling,” Clotho
said.

“The most vulnerable, and most
powerful of us all.” Lachesis smiled at her.

“Blessed and cursed among women,”
Atropos said.

“And,” Clotho said, “the center of the
magical universe.”

Rob looked at her. She hadn’t noticed
when the Interim Fates had called her that. But she was noticing
now.