Totally Spellbound Read Online Free

guess,” Megan
said.
    “They’re trying to rescue some
spinning wheel for the Fates,” Kyle said.
    “Excuse me?” Megan asked.
    Kyle hit his forehead with the heel of
his hand. “I keep forgetting that you haven’t been here the whole
time. You always know what’s going on and this time it’s been kinda
weird.”
    “Just tell me,” Megan said.
    And so he did.
     
    * * *
     
    Even if Megan believed in magic and
fate and all that mumbo jumbo, she still wasn’t sure if this story
could be true. It sounded like Kyle had recounted a dream. Still,
her profession had taught her the importance of dreams—in them
lurked the subconscious, with its wants, desires, and knowledge—so
she struggled to pay attention.
    What she finally understood was this:
the women in the living room of the suite truly believed they were
the Greek Fates who had ruled over mankind for centuries. They had
been all-powerful until Zeus had initiated a coup and instituted
his daughters as new Fates.
    This, however, was a problem as the
Fates administered more than life and death. They kept alive all
the rules that created true love.
    Zeus, for grown-up reasons
that Kyle didn’t really want to understand, wanted to destroy true
love. In order to destroy true love, Zeus had had to get rid of the
Fates, which he had done, even tricking them into giving up their
magical powers.
    The Fates needed to get their magic
back. To do that, they needed their old spinning wheel. It could
restore their powers ten thousand times over.
    The problem was that the
spinning wheel had been stolen by the Faerie Kings, who had needed
the magic to start their rival magical kingdom. They had hidden the
wheel, and now the Fates had to find it.
    Which was why they needed a detective.
That was Zoe.
    So Travers was helping Zoe
find a magic spinning wheel. And, oh, by the way, the reason
Travers had always been so good with money was because he was
magical, too. Just like Zoe, who was over a hundred years
old.
    Megan wasn’t sure she had
gotten it all, but she clung to this: the Fates had magic once, but
they didn’t any longer. Her stolid brother, who didn’t even like
fiction about magic, was really a magician, and he had fallen in
love with a woman who was at least seventy years older than he
was—a woman who was both detective and magician.
    It was, if Megan did say so herself,
one of the most inventive stories a kid had ever told her. And she
had heard some doozies over the years.
    “And I should probably say one more
thing.” Kyle was watching her as she absorbed the
information.
    “What’s that, hon?” she
asked.
    “The reason I’m so ‘intuitive’ all the
time is that I can read minds.”
    She stared at him. He
actually believed that part of it. Was it a defense mechanism? Some
way to cope with being off-the-charts brilliant and so incredibly
precocious as a result? Not many eleven-year-olds had the
vocabulary he did, the maturity he did, and the sensitivity he
did.
    His shoulders wilted in the face of
her silence.
    “It’s okay,” he said quietly. “You
don’t have to believe me.”
    She took his warm little hand in hers.
“I do, Kyle,” she said, telling herself she wasn’t really lying.
She believed that he believed all of this.
    “You’ll see,” he said, slipping
grumpily under his blankets. “This is all true. You won’t be able
to explain it away, Aunt Meg. If Dad can come around, you can
too.”
    She bent over, kissed his forehead,
and tucked the sheet around him. Then she shut off the
light.
    “I’m sure I can, kiddo,” she said
quietly. “I’m sure I can.”
     

 
     
Four
     
    The Fate women were crowded around the
bedroom door, apparently attempting to eavesdrop. Megan nearly
knocked two of them over as she pushed the door outward. They
scrambled backward and didn’t even try to apologize.
    Megan had learned over the
years that rudeness was something she couldn’t abide. It was,
according to her own counselor (all therapists