Totally Spellbound (38 page)

“All right then,” Megan said, her
stomach in knots. She made herself look at the girls. “Who wants to
go first?”

The second Faerie King leapt up from
his chair, holding a foil.

He pointed the tip
at Rob, and said with a grin, “
En
garde!
”

Robin’s sword should
have been able to snap a foil, but he had a hunch it wasn’t going
to work that way. So he used the first Faerie King like a shield
and responded to the second Faerie King’s
en garde
with a thrust of his
own.

Suddenly he was in an old-fashioned
sword fight, the kind that he had privately missed for centuries.
The third Faerie King leapt off the platform and engaged John.
Travers stood back, looking at his blade as if it could bite
him.

“Remember Marian?” Rob yelled at
John.

“What?” John yelled back.

The first Faerie King struggled, but
Rob had him around the throat. This wasn’t going to last long,
especially if the guy used magic on him.

“Remember the rescue?” Rob slapped his
blade at the foil. They clanged, but the foil didn’t collapse. “The
first one?”

“What?” John yelled back.

“He said remember the first rescue of
Marian,” Travers yelled.

John’s Faerie King had him backed
against the platform.

“Are you nuts?” John asked.

“No, dammit,” Rob yelled. His breath
was coming in large gasps. “I’m trying to tell you
something.”

About how he had created a diversion
while John and the Merry Men rescued Marian from the clutches of
the sheriff—the first time. Other times, the situation had been
reversed.

That woman had had a gift for getting
herself captured.

John flipped the third Faerie King
around, and slapped him on the back with the flat of his blade. The
Faerie King gasped as if he had lost air.

“Oh,” John said. “Right.”

The second Faerie King thrust at Rob.
Rob parried and turned at the same time, so the point of the foil
nearly stabbed the first Faerie King.

“Do that!” Rob said.

“There’s only two of us,” John said,
as the third Faerie King turned around again, his blade now a
broadsword. Travers still hadn’t done anything. “Make that one and
a half.”

The first Faerie King was
still struggling. Sweat was running down Robin’s face. He was lucky
that the second king was more interested in traditional fencing
than in an actual sword fight.

“So?” Robin said. “Just do
it.”

“Now he’s quoting Nike
slogans at me,” John muttered, but he shoved the third Faerie King
at the second, and both Faeries went tumbling. “Get up here,
Travers!”

Travers didn’t have to be
told twice. He jumped on the platform.

The first Faerie King shook loose of
Robin. The other two started to get up.

“And throw me your blade!” Robin
yelled at Travers.

“Okay.” Travers looked terrified. His
throw was awful, but Robin managed to catch it.

Now he stood in the center
of the Faerie Circle, two swords in hand, one Faerie King facing
him, and two more about to join the fray. He needed more help. He
needed extra power. He needed—

He looked at the wheel.
Travers had said it could boost his magic. It was worth a
try.

John was behind the wheel trying to
pry it loose. Travers was standing next to him, looking as helpless
as a regular mortal.

Robin pointed his blade at the thing,
and summoned power to him.

A beam of light crackled against the
black casino ceiling, then floated down, hit the sword, jumped to
the other sword, and sent power through him like an out-of-control
electrical current.

His teeth chattered
and his head rattled and he couldn’t see a damn thing. He smelled
smoke, and heard a
ka-pow
before something blasted him across the
room.

When he opened his eyes,
he was at the far end of the Faerie Circle, the swords glued to his
hands. He couldn’t see the wheel anymore, but all three Faerie
Kings were advancing on him—

And he wasn’t even sure he could stand
up.

The light was a great distraction, but
John wasn’t about to touch that spinning wheel when power was
flowing off it like a river. Still, he got behind the thing,
figured out how to lift it, and beckoned Travers.

Travers came around, his skin so white
he looked translucent. “Shouldn’t we help Rob?”

“Rob’s been in worse situations,” John
said, not sure if that was true. “We’re carrying this puppy outta
here.”

“Carrying?” Travers asked.

“Shut up and help,” John
said.

Something
ka-boom
ed, and the entire
Faerie Circle went dark for an instant. John lifted the wheel—it
was lighter than he imagined—and glanced up.

“Is that out of the hole it was
in?”

“Yeah,” Travers said.

“Well, get us out of here.”

Travers flung his arms around the
wheel and John, and suddenly they were floating upward. John did
not want to be floating. He wanted to disappear and appear, but
that wasn’t possible from Faerie, so he preferred to be zooming. He
added some of his own power—or maybe some of the wheel’s power—and
headed toward the surface.

They shot through the ground like a
rocket, coming up through a sewer grate on Las Vegas boulevard,
startling dozens of drivers and causing a near-pileup.

John saw no reason to stop zooming,
and headed immediately to the hotel. Travers was protesting, but
John couldn’t hear him.

Or maybe John didn’t want to hear
him.

They zoomed through the front
doors—Travers remembered to open them, somehow and up the stairs
and through (whoops! No one opened that) the door of the suite and
into the room with the kid and the Fates and Zoe
Sinclair.

Everyone turned to greet
them.

John landed beside the kid’s chair,
and bowed, then handed the giant (but light) spinning wheel to the
Fates.

And as he stood, he realized they
looked disappointed.

Rob wasn’t sure how long he was going
to hold out. Two swords—stuck to his hands no less—against three
Faerie Kings were not good odds, no matter how much the stupid
wheel had enhanced his powers.

All three kings had foils.
They were using them the way the Fates talked—the first Faerie King
thrust first, followed by the second, followed by the third. Which
made fighting them easier than it should have been, but Robin
expected a group of Faeries to run into this part of the casino at
any moment.

So far they hadn’t.

So far, Megan had held them
off.

He hoped she was all right.

Yeouch!

The first Faerie King had
made contact. Rob looked down at his arm, saw a scratch with blood
starting to leak out of it, and every single fairy tale he’d ever
read came back to him. Something in the blade would weaken him,
take his magic—hurt him somehow.

The kings had stopped, too, staring at
the blood as if they were surprised.

Then the second Faerie King stepped
forward, thrusting with his blade, and Robin parried with his left
hand. He should have parried with his right because the third
Faerie King came from the far left side, and was about to hit Rob’s
skin when—

Rob blanked out.

Actually, he suddenly went to a
complete white environment and then landed, as if he’d been dropped
from a great height, on the floor of the suite.

The landing knocked
the air out of him, but he probably would have lost the air anyway.
The Fates stood above him, looking taller than he remembered.
Taller, and prettier, and
bigger
somehow.

The spinning wheel, set on
its legs properly, stood behind them, and even farther behind them,
a television screen showed hundreds (thousands?) of Faeries
pressing against each other in the casino parking lot.

Poor Megan.

Rob tried to sit up, but couldn’t. The
dang swords were still fused to his hands, and they flopped around
like solid shirt sleeves.

“Can someone help me?”

The kid reached down, saw
the swords, and looked at the Fates. Clotho smiled, Lachesis
pointed, and Atropos touched the top of his hand.

The swords fell away.

“Got your magic back, I see.” Rob
looked at his hands. No damage, no danger. So far.

“Thank you,” Clotho said, much more
primly than he would have expected.

“They’re annoyed at us,” John
said.

“Why?” Rob stood up. He was dizzy.
Travers stood near an empty chair. Had Zoe gone for Megan? Rob
hoped so. He would ask in a moment.

“Apparently, we were supposed to bring
the Faerie Kings along with the wheel,” John said.

“Why?” Rob asked, putting a hand to
his forehead. All that had taken a lot more energy than he
expected.

“Something about destiny,” Travers
said.

Rob looked at him, forced himself to
focus, and asked, “Did Zoe go for Meg?”

“Yep,” Travers glanced at
the screen. There seemed to be even more Faeries than there had
been before. “And I hope she gets back soon. It’s looking bad
there.”

Worse than Rob had expected. He
wondered if he should go help. He rubbed his forehead. He hadn’t
been this tired from magic use in—he had no idea how long. He
probably should call Felix, his falcon, and use the strength of his
familiar to make himself feel better before he went for Megan, but
he wasn’t sure he had that kind of time.

“You okay?” Kyle asked him. The boy
was still sitting in that chair he’d insisted upon. He looked a
little peaked too.

“Yeah,” Rob said.

And then Zoe popped into the room. Her
hair was mussed and her shirt had a rip on one sleeve.

“What happened?” Travers
asked.

But Zoe didn’t look at him. Her gaze
met Rob’s and it was filled with panic.

“Megan,” she said, “is
gone.”

Rob felt like he’d been punched in the
stomach. He’d been afraid of this from the moment he met her.
Losing her was worse than never meeting her at all.

“Gone?” he repeated. Then
he looked at the screen. The Faeries still crowded the door of the
casino as if they were trying to get in. “But what’s
that?”

“There’s a mannequin, a diversion.
It’s chock full of emotion, and looks just like Megan. I can’t
imagine who would have the power to do that, but whoever it was got
in and out without anyone noticing.” Zoe tugged on that ripped
shirt, ripping it further. She grabbed the tear, and absently
repaired it with a tiny magic.

“Let me see,” Lachesis said, and waved
an arm at the screen.

The view changed from the
parking lot to the interior of the casino. In a dark and ratty
seeming buffet, a woman sat at a table, looking cool and collected.
Hundreds of Faeries pushed toward her, creating little eddies in
the sea of bodies.

Megan would never have been that calm
in that place. She would have tried hard, but she wouldn’t have
succeeded.

The Fates crowded against the screen,
peering at it.

“I thought you were supposed to track
her,” Travers said to Kyle.

“I don’t track, Dad. She was supposed
to contact me if she got in trouble.” And then he gasped on the
last word.

Rob whirled. The boy was
pale.

“She did contact you,” Rob
said.

The boy shook his head. “But there was
a weird feeling, like scaredness or something and then everything
went okay.”

“Before she disappeared,” Zoe
said.

Kyle sniffled. “I didn’t mean to lose
her. I was really trying…”

And it was John who put a comforting
hand on Kyle’s shoulder. “Of course you were, kid. They asked the
impossible of you. We’ll find her.”

“We can trace her,” Atropos
said.

“But we’re not going to like what we
find,” Clotho added.

Rob’s stomach flipped. His headache
had gotten worse. “Why not?”

“Because,” Lachesis said, her green
gaze meeting his. “She was taken by Zeus.”

Rob didn’t wait for the
others. He zapped himself to the casino, not caring if his magic
broadcast to every Faerie in receiving range. Besides, every Faerie
in receiving range was here, trying to get near the tower of
emotion that Zeus had left in place of Megan.