Totally Spellbound (32 page)

You need to make walls
between yourself and the world. Let me show you.

Great-Aunt Eugenia
had touched her head, her shoulders, and helped her bring up
shields—that’s what Megan eventually called it. Later, her
therapist called it a
Star Trek
metaphor: whenever Megan didn’t want to deal with
something, she raised shields.

But there had been more to that day
that simple shields. Her great-aunt had smiled at her and cupped
her face.

You need the walls,
honey, just to get through the day. But remember, never ever wall
off your heart
.

Had she done that? She wasn’t sure. It
had certainly been hurt enough.

She walked toward the
living room and sank into the chair where Rob had been sitting
before dinner. She ran her fingers over the arm, remembering how
his hand on her thigh had soothed her.

All those men. She had tumbled into
bed with some of them because their lust infected her. But she had
stayed away from just as many—or more. Some of them had seemed like
they had a cloud around them, a cloud of confusing emotion—part
lust, part hatred, part admiration.

Stalker
emotions
, she’d told her friend
Conchita.
There’s something off about these
guys
.

How do you
know
? Conchita would
ask.

Megan would
shrug.
I just know
.

And that was the worst part.
Quantifying things. She had always been intuitive, always relied on
her gut and not her head. That was the main reason she fought with
Travers. He was all logic—at least until he met Zoe—and Megan was
all emotion.

Only Megan’s emotion had
logic, and beneath Travers’ logic, there was always a little too
much emotion.

But Rob, Rob had seemed pure to her
from the beginning. Not pure in a sexual sense—he clearly wasn’t
(she smiled)—but his reactions were clear, his emotions
untainted.

He had been intriguing from the first,
in that weird outfit in the desert after all the streetlights had
gone out, and then in his office, and in her apartment, and finally
here, when he had decided to prove to her how he felt.

How could he think he had
manipulated her when he was being so honest? He had just wanted to
show her how he felt.

And she had known
it. She had felt it, all of his emotion,
all
of it, and had almost gotten lost
in it.

Then she had separated from it and
tried to figure out her own—

And couldn’t.

Because she had walled off
her heart, despite what Great-Aunt Eugenia had told her? Was that
why Megan had never, ever fallen in love? Because she had blocked
every opportunity?

Was that why her eyes had teared up
when Rob touched her? Because her heart was struggling against a
wall, trying to break free?

Raised voices came to her
from the next room—Rob and Travers—and bits of emotion. She was
good at blocking out emotion from room to room—she had learned that
from Great-Aunt Eugenia, too.

Megan actually had to concentrate to
see what the emotion was: a mixture of fear and panic and anger—and
guilt.

She closed her eyes: concentrated. She
could actually separate out the emotion by person. She had never
really tried that before, although she had done it in counseling
sessions. If she focused on a person, actually looked at them, she
could get a sense of them.

But she had always thought that part
of her concentration, not as magical gift.

Both men were feeling the anger and
both, oddly enough, were feeling guilt. But Rob was feeling the
fear, and Travers was feeling panic.

Because of her? Why?

She let the emotions go, stood up, and
walked as far from the other suite as she could. She touched the
edge of the table, where the map had been, and frowned.

Rob had always been up
front with her. Why then, was he so adamant about her not going
into Faerie? Every time he had said that, she had gotten angry
because he used the word control.

(And oh, boy, did that make sense now.
Always, always people accused her of being out of control, of
needing control, of needing help, of needing someone else to take
charge because she was too emotional.)

He knew what she was, so he wasn’t
trying to get her to control her emotions, and while he was being
protective, he hadn’t treated any other woman in the room
paternally. So something else was going on.

She closed her eyes, remembered,
trying to see if she could sort out the emotions that had been
flying through this room.

And what she got, again, was
fear.

What would terrify the great Robin
Hood?

She opened her eyes. She had already
seen what terrified him. It was the very thing that had closed him
down for so very long. For centuries, actually.

Robin was afraid of loss. He had lost
Marian. He was afraid of losing Megan.

Really?

Or was that her ego
talking?

And why would going into Faerie mean
that he had lost her?

Someone knocked on the suite door. She
frowned, resisting the urge to get a sense who it was. She had
separated herself long enough. She needed to get back to Travers’
suite to make sure her brother and her lover didn’t kill each
other.

She went to the door, and pulled it
open.

Rob stood there, his head bowed. He
looked almost boyish, like a child who expected to be yelled at for
something he had already done.

“May I come in?” he asked.

She nodded, and backed away from the
door. Despite her resolution, she was having difficulty opening her
heart. It almost felt like something blocked her, something
reluctant inside her kept her boxed in.

Rob stepped into the room, and closed
the door behind himself. He started to reach for her, and then
stopped. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

“I know,” she said.

“I didn’t mean to manipulate
you.”

“I know that too,” she
said.

His brow furrowed, just a little, as
if this wasn’t going the way he expected. “I really do love
you.”

“I know,” she said again.

He shook his head slightly. “Then why
did you leave?”

“A few minutes ago?” she
asked.

He nodded.

“I needed time to think.” Away from
the noise, away from the untidy emotions. Away from Rob.

“Do you want me to go, then?” he
asked.

She shook her head. “I want you to
answer a question.”

“All right,” he said
cautiously.

“I want you to tell me what would
happen to me if I went to Faerie.”

The fear that rose from him was
palpable. She could actually feel him work to tamp it
down.

She decided to try something,
something she used to do impulsively with some of her more
distressed clients.

She touched his arm, and sent soothing
warmth his way.

His fear lessened.

His eyes widened. “Who taught you
that?”

She shrugged. “I think I picked it up
on my own. It works then?”

“It’s part of your magic.”

“I thought women don’t have magic
until they get older.”

He smiled. “It’s a rule designed by
Zeus. But a few things got missed. Like empathy. That’s not an
emotion he understands, so he doesn’t recognize empaths as
magical.”

“Strange,” Megan said. “So he has that
much control, then?”

“He has more than you can
imagine.”

“But I thought he ruled with all the
others.”

“He does,” Rob said, “but he leads
them and he manipulates them. He’s not a good man.”

“I’ve figured that out.” She let her
hand drop from Rob’s arm. The fear he had felt was gone now. “You
still haven’t told me about Faerie.”

And the fear bobbled back, just a
little, and then it stayed constant.

Rob sighed. “You’re not going to just
trust me on this, are you?”

“I’m curious,” she said, “and besides,
if it’s something I should worry about, I’d rather know about
it.”

His entire expression changed. Somehow
those words calmed him. Perhaps because they made sense to
him.

“Let’s go sit,” he said.

He led her into the living room, and
he took the armchair again. She didn’t sit on the arm because she
wanted to see his face. So she sat on the couch, her hands threaded
together and resting between her knees.

“Faerie,” Rob said. “It’s a scary
place.”

“I’m gathering that,” Megan said. “It
looked kind of familiar.”

“The Faeries get some of their magic
from luck. They steal as much of it as they can.”

She nodded, knowing he was still
hesitating.

“But it’s also a cold
place, Meg.” He sounded like a man who knew. “There are rumors—and
I don’t know if they’re true—that the Faeries themselves don’t
understand emotion. They can’t experience it. Or won’t.”

“Aren’t they—human?—like you guys?”
She asked. “Or us? I am one of you guys, right?”

He smiled. “Right.”

“So, we’re human, right?”

“Kind of,” he said. “I
don’t want to use the word superhuman, because that has all kinds
of terrible connotations. We’re more than human, I guess. Enhanced
humans. Or maybe human is just normal, and we’re a little more than
normal. You know, like intelligence. People have a range of
intelligence, but most fall in the average category. We’re above
average, I guess. I’m trying not to make us sound better, because
we’re not. We’re just different. And amazingly the same, at the
same time.”

Surprisingly, his words didn’t confuse
her. He valued regular people—he had fallen in love with one and
still loved her, even though she had been gone for centuries. He
thought of himself as having more gifts, but not as being
better.

And Megan’s heart opened at that.
Warmth flooded her, almost overwhelming her.

She did love him. She had loved him
from the moment she met him, but this—this realization that he
cared about all kinds of people, and on a deep, deep level—this
somehow broke down that last wall.

The wall that said she wasn’t good
enough or thin enough or smart enough — or, as she had learned in
the last few hours—magic enough for him to love her.

These distinctions didn’t matter to
him. He valued people, just like she did, whether they were rich or
poor, fat or thin, smart or dumb.

Magic or not.

Her eyes filled with tears
again.

“Did I say something wrong?” he
asked.

She shook her head and then wiped at
her eyes with the back of her hand. “Go on.”

He frowned, then blinked at her. Then
said, “I lost my place.”

She let out a small
laugh—mostly because she had been nervous—and then said, “I
sidetracked you. I asked if Faeries were human, but then I asked if
you and I were too.”

He smiled. “Oh, yeah. And
yes, I think Faeries are. But I don’t know. We all look
different—redheads, blonds, brunettes, different skin colors, just
like the rest of the human race. But Faeries all have black hair
and pointed ears and upswept eyebrows. They look different, and
they might be different.”

Then he shrugged.

“But,” he said, “that
could be good old-fashioned prejudice speaking. A lot of what I
know about Faeries is pretty old, from before we learned that
people are the same under the skin.”

“If you’re right,” Megan said, “and
they don’t feel emotion, then they’re not the same.”

“But I don’t know if
that’s true or a myth,” Rob said. “I’ve stayed clear of Faerie as
much as I can. I do know that some humans have fallen in love with
Faeries. I’ve also known a few Faeries who quit their kind and came
to live among us. They claimed they did it for love.”

“You don’t believe them?”

He opened his hands and studied his
palms. “They didn’t sound like they believed it themselves. It was
almost like they aspired to love, does that make sense? They tried
to act like someone in love, so that maybe they would fall in
love.”

“Could it be a spell?” Megan asked.
Then she frowned again, feeling a swirling confusion. She knew so
very little, and it was beginning to annoy her. “We do do spells,
right?”

“I do. Zoe does. Travers does,” Rob
said. “But you don’t, not in the traditional sense, and neither
does Kyle, although he might when he gets older. Some magicks are
different.”

“Like the
Faeries?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “and yes,
they could be under a spell. But if it affected all of them, I
think that would be more properly considered a curse.”