Absolutely Captivated Read online

  Absolutely Captivated

  Kristine Grayson

  Other Books By Kristine Grayson

  Utterly Charming

  Thoroughly Kissed

  Completely Smitten

  Simply Irresistible

  Absolutely Captivated

  Totally Spellbound

  Wickedly Charming

  Copyright Information

  Absolutely Captivated

  Copyright © 2012 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  First published by Zebra Books, 2004

  Published by WMG Publishing

  Cover and Layout copyright © 2012 by WMG Publishing

  Cover design by Allyson Longueira/WMG Publishing

  Cover art copyright © Sergey Denisov/Dreamstime, Svetap/Dreamstime

  Smashwords Edition

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional,

  and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  For KW and Geri Jeter

  Acknowledgements

  Many thanks go to my husband for his support on these books, and his willingness to live with someone who names her cats as oddly as the familiars in these novels.

  Table of Contents

  Absolutely Captivated

  Copyright Information

  About the Author

  One

  Zoe Sinclair carried three overflowing beer steins toward the darkened corner of the bar, ignoring the catcalls and cries of “Hey, Baby, bring ‘em over here!” coming from the men at tables around the room. The calls came in perfect counterpoint to the beep-beep of the video poker machines lined up against the wall by the door. The cigarette smoke was thick and blue in the low-ceilinged room, and Zoe wouldn’t have it any other way.

  She was emphatically not a waitress—never had been, never would be, no matter how tight her money got—but she had perfected the three-stein carry in the nineteenth century, when she spent way too much time in German beer gardens, trying to find a secret doorway to Faerie that she’d heard about in Munich. She never found that German doorway, but she had come away with some practical skills, most of them having to do with beer.

  O’Hasie’s Pub was crowded tonight, which meant that one of the downtown casinos was hosting a major poker tournament. O’Hasie’s was on the wrong side of Fremont Street, as far from the Fremont Street Experience as a walker could get.

  O’Hasie’s catered mainly to the locals, but during major downtown tournaments, the poker players—usually the losing ones—made their way through the drug dealers and hookers who found refuge in this last unDisneyfied section of Vegas, and stopped at O’Hasie’s for some refreshment.

  If Zoe had remembered that this was the big event, she would have suggested a different bar. But there were so many casinos in Las Vegas now, each with its own round of tournaments and concerts and special events, that she couldn’t keep track of any of them.

  Whenever Zoe went to a tourist venue, she wore the traditional costume of the traveling American: blue jeans, logo t-shirt, and sneakers. What she usually liked about O’Hasie’s was that no tourists ventured close to it (except during major tournaments), and she could dress however she pleased.

  Tonight she wore a black skirt with a slit along the side, and a see-through blouse over a black t-shirt. She topped it all with a small black fedora on her chin-length black hair. Certainly not camouflage clothes. The tourists looked at her as if she were a member of Vegas’s exotic nightlife.

  Zoe managed to make it all the way to the back without spilling a drop—not a mean trick, considering how wobbly her stiletto heels were on the pilled carpet. She skirted around two bulky women in green Fitzgerald’s t-shirts, and headed for the booth next to the restrooms.

  The booth had the benefit of privacy. It had tall sides made of the original mahogany wood that had once graced O’Hasie’s. In the many remodels this bar had undergone since 1955, the mahogany mostly disappeared, except in a few surprising places—this booth, the corridor leading to the restrooms, and an old-fashioned glass-doored phone cubicle just past the men’s room door.

  A small red-shaded lamp glued to the wall above the table gave the booth an even greater air of privacy. From the bar, the patrons sitting in the booth were impossible to see.

  But as she stepped across a rip in the carpet that had been there since 1983, the booth came into view. Its red upholstery looked particularly seedy, and the plastic oak-veneer tabletop, which someone had replaced the old wooden tables with four decades ago, had dried water stains that looked orange in the weird light.

  Her friends, Herschel and Gaylord, were using two straws to slap a wadded-up straw wrapper back and forth as if it were a hockey puck. They were bent across the table, the game obviously serious, as games always were with the two of them.

  They looked enough alike to be brothers, even though they weren’t. They both had thick black hair, slightly pointed ears, and slender forms that they tried to hide under heavy leather jackets covered with lots of chains and metal. Lately Herschel had tried to toughen up his pretty face with piercings, but the studs in his nose emphasized its small, perfect shape, and the rings in the eyebrows only served to accent their upswept arch, which made them look like wings. Nothing these two guys could do—not even Gaylord’s bruised right eye—could make take away from their unearthly beauty.

  Zoe set the steins down, then slid one to Herschel and the other to Gaylord. She took the third stein for herself and sat down next to Herschel, adjusting her skirt so that the slit didn’t show quite as much thigh to the drunk and disappointed poker players.

  “You screwed up the arena,” Gaylord said, raising his straw as if it were a lance. “You got water all over the playing surface.”

  Zoe picked up the crumpled wrapper, rolled it into a perfect ball between her manicured fingertips, and then tossed it into the wastebasket halfway across the room. She hit the basket, but didn’t shout Two points! like she normally would have.

  Instead, she leaned back in the booth and said, “We’ve had enough table hockey for the night.”

  “You know, Zo,” Herschel said, tugging on a ring at the corner of his delicate mouth, “there are times you are no fun at all.”

  Zoe sipped the foam on her beer, wishing that this bar had something more exotic than Heineken on tap. “I’ve got two divorces, one insurance fraud case, and one missing dachshund to find, so if you two—”

  “Missing dachshund?” Gaylord giggled. The sound was high-pitched and infectious, and caught the attention of the poker players at a nearby table. They looked at Gaylord in shock, probably trying to decide how old he was. When Gaylord giggled like that, he sounded like he was three.

  “Zo,” Gaylord said, “you’re better than finding missing dogs.”

  “It’s my job,” Zoe said. “I take the work that interests me.”

  “Since when did you become a pet detective?” Herschel asked.

  Zoe felt a thread of irritation. “Since the client came to my office. Which is where I’m going to go if you two don’t tell me why I’m here.”

  “Zo, Zo, Zo,” Gaylord said. “You should get your money the old-fashioned way. You should conjure it.”

  He clapped his hands together and stacks of neatly wrapped hundred-dollar bills littered the tabletop.

  “I don’t do that,” Zoe said. “You know that.”

  She believed in earning her way through hard work, not magic. Besides, she was a mage, subject to the judgment of the Fates, and the rule of the Powers Th
at Be. Herschel and Gaylord were Faeries, who lived under different rules. The Faerie Kings—the Faerie equivalent of the Fates—didn’t seem to mind a lot of magic use, where the Fates punished mages for using too much.

  Gaylord picked up a stack of bills and waved it under Zoe’s nose. The stack smelled faintly of clover. “C’mon, Zo,” he said. “Live a little. Party up, girl. You work too hard.”

  Zoe slapped the money away. “I don’t cheat people.”

  “This isn’t cheating,” Gaylord said. “People are always so happy to get cash.”

  “It’s Faerie money,” she whispered. “It’ll fade away in twenty-four hours.”

  “Long after you’re gone, sweetheart,” Gaylord said. “The humans’ll just think they’ve lost it or spent it or counted it wrong when they were drunk.”

  Zoe crossed her arms. The poker players from the next table were watching, their eyes big.

  “Get it out of here,” she said very quietly, “or I’m leaving.”

  “By the solstice, Zo,” Herschel snapped, “when did you get to be such a pain?”

  Zoe gave him a cold smile. “I always have been, Hersch. I just usually pain in your favor.”

  Herschel tugged harder on the ring on the side of his mouth. “You make it sound like I take sides. I don’t. Usually.”

  “Neither do I,” said Zoe. “Now get rid of this stuff.”

  “If you promise to stop using real names,” Herschel said. “You’re making me nervous.”

  She had intended to make him nervous. The real name of a magical person—be he Faerie or mage—had a lot of power. With the right spell, someone magical could control another magical person, just by using their real name.

  “Well,” Zoe said, nodding toward the Faerie money, “you’re making me nervous, not to mention attracting a lot of attention.”

  Gaylord cursed in Gaelic which, from his accent, was not his native language. He clapped his hands together, and the money disappeared.

  Zoe stretched one long leg toward the seat on the other side of the booth, then crossed the other leg over it. The slit in her skirt fell open, revealing a lot of skin.

  She hoped the poker players noticed, so that they didn’t search for the missing cash.

  “You boys called me,” she said softly. “Tell me what’s going on or I’m taking your beers back to the bar.”

  Both Herschel and Gaylord grabbed their steins as if she had already tried to take them. She had taken their drinks away before. She felt she had that right.

  She always bought when the three of them met because she didn’t want to risk her reputation around town. Contrary to what Gaylord said, mortals did remember who gave them Faerie money. And even though they might not understand what happened, and eventually come to think of it as some kind of cheap parlor trick, they did resent it.

  “Word on the street, Zo, is that the magic is gathering around you,” Gaylord said.

  “Which street?” Zoe asked. “Are we talking about the Strip or that avenue in Faerie you boys coated with pyrite?”

  Herschel rolled his eyes. “It’s not fool’s gold, love. It’s pixie dust, and you know we weren’t supposed to tell you about that.”

  “I don’t remember ever telling her about that,” Gaylord said, giving Herschel a sideways look. “Did you?”

  “We had to,” Herschel said. “Zoe’s never going to Faerie, are you, Zo?”

  Zoe didn’t answer that, at least not directly. She was afraid of Faerie. The prophecy that each mage got when her magical career started warned Zoe against Faerie, while promising her great rewards if she lived near it.

  She could still hear the words as if they were being spoken for the first time: You shall find your true love near Faerie, if you don’t lose yourself inside its ever-changing walls.

  For the first few decades of her magical life, she had sought out Faerie, trying to find an entrance. She wanted to find her true love. She actually hoped that she would.

  In those early years, she found two entrances to Faerie—and had two disastrous relationships while she lived nearby. Finally, she gave up on finding her true love. She wandered all over the world, settling in Los Angeles and becoming a private detective.

  In the end, though, Faerie’s siren song lured her to Las Vegas, the center of the Faerie universe. She loved it here, with its combination of glitz and seediness. She loved the people who came through, the cases that she got, and the mortals that she met. She even had a lot of Faerie friends.

  But she refused to go anywhere near the entrance to Faerie, and tried hard to forget about the prophecy that had once guided her entire existence.

  So she didn’t answer Herschel’s question directly. Instead, she said, “Why should I go to Faerie when it comes to me with rumors?”

  “I been hearing them all over, doll,” Herschel said, sipping on his beer. “Sages, prophets, the glamour-eyed. They are all talking about you.”

  “Me?” Zoe felt unsettled. The people Herschel mentioned were human with touches of magic, not part of the magical universe at all (although some of them eventually would become part of it). But these people saw corners of things, and it did the magical well to pay attention to what these people said.

  “You, love,” Gaylord said. “Everyone’s saying the magic is gathering around you. Your time has come.”

  Zoe’s mouth felt dry. “My time for what?”

  “For whatever your destiny is,” Herschel said. “Magic doesn’t gather unless a destiny is about to be fulfilled.”

  “That’s Faerie belief,” Zoe said. “We don’t believe that.”

  Herschel shrugged. “We all dip into the same magical well, Zo. Believe or don’t believe. We just thought we’d warn you. Your prophecy is about to come true.”

  Gaylord stuck the straw he’d been using as a hockey stick into his beer. Then he stirred the amber liquid, ostensibly watching bubbles rise. But, Zoe could tell, he was looking at her out of the corner of his black-and-blue eye.

  “It’s not a bad one, is it?” Gaylord asked.

  “What?” Zoe asked, a little too quickly.

  “Your prophecy. It’s not bad, right?”

  Depended on whether you looked at the true love part or the warning part. But again, Zoe didn’t answer him directly. Her prophecy was none of his business.

  “All the mage prophecies are about love,” Zoe said.

  “Oh, yeah.” Herschel giggled. His giggle wasn’t as infectious as Gaylord’s but it ran a close second. “Hearts, flowers, happily ever after. Soulmates. All sweetness and light, just like our Zoe here.”

  “Don’t make fun,” Zoe said. “Some people take this really seriously.”

  The smile left Herschel’s metal-covered face. “You one of them, Zo?”

  She used to be. Before her heart got broken, shattered, stomped on, and flattened.

  “You know me,” Zoe said. “Give me an Elvis Chapel, a bouquet of black hearts, and a million dollars, and I’ll be happily married until the money’s gone.”

  “I can give you a million dollars, babe,” Herschel said.

  Zoe narrowed her eyes. “Real money, Hersch. Real money.”

  “Liar.” Gaylord slurped the beer through his straw. He’d done that as long as Zoe had known him, and every time it creeped her out. Especially the sucking sound, as if he were pulling hops off the bottom of the stein with his lungs.

  “I’m not lying,” Zoe said. “I hate your money.”

  “You’re lying about your dream, there, Zo.” Gaylord stirred the beer with the soggy end of his straw. It had teeth marks in it, pointy holes from Gaylord’s extra-sharp canines. Or, as he liked to call them, his fangs.

  “I am not,” Zoe said, clutching her own beer stein tightly. Except for one sip, she hadn’t had any beer. And now she didn’t want any more. But she held the stein in front of her as if it were a shield.

  “Hon, you can have black hearts and Elvis, if you really want that. I’m not disputing that part. I’m disputi
ng the money part. You’ve got enough to last you and with a snap of your fingers, you can conjure more.” He stirred hard enough to make more bubbles rise.

  Herschel tugged at a diamond pierced into the side of his nose, then realized what he was doing, stopped, and wiped his hand on his leather pants.

  Gaylord continued, “You’re an idealist, Zo. It’s clear in all you do. You hide it, you pretend you’re a cynical as they come, but you like the mortals and you like helping them, and you’re not in it for the money.”

  Zoe gripped her beer stein tighter. She didn’t think Gaylord was smart enough to see through her—not that it was hard. Anyone looking at her actions would know that she wasn’t as cynical as she pretended to be.

  She just hadn’t thought anyone else was paying attention.

  “So I betcha you believe in all this true love hogwash, and are secretly hoping some Prince Charming’ll knock you off your feet and ride off into the sunset with you.”

  “Talk about mixed metaphors,” Herschel muttered.

  “And such a lovely image, too,” Zoe said.

  “So,” Gaylord said, undeterred by the criticism, “if the magic is gathering, your Prince Charming is on the horizon.”

  Zoe set her beer stein down. “First of all, I don’t believe in Prince Charmings. I don’t believe in Prince anythings, having met several of them, and realizing that just because they’re royalty doesn’t mean their ears don’t stick out.”

  “Hey!” Herschel put his hands over his severely pierced, jeweled, and pointed ears.

  “She was referring to the British royalty, bud,” Gaylord said.

  Zoe pretended she hadn’t heard the interchange. “Secondly, I don’t believe in Charming. Charming means liar. Charming means a man who’ll do anything to get what he wants. Thirdly—”