Totally Spellbound Read Free Page A

“Because
that’s where he is right now. Getting our—ahem—job
back.”
    Megan’s head ached. She rubbed her
nose with her thumb and forefinger, getting a sense she wouldn’t
understand what was going on if she tried.
    “Where’s Kyle?” she asked.
    All three women smiled. Lachesis
nodded toward the nearest bedroom, Atropos pointed, and Clotho
indicated it with her hand.
    “In there,” they said in
unison.
    This day was getting stranger by the
minute. Megan excused herself and walked to the door. She put her
hand on the knob, then held a finger to her lips, indicating that
the three strange women remain quiet.
    She opened the door. The familiar
scents of Gatorade, peanut butter, and little boy reached her. She
smiled in spite of herself and closed the door behind
her.
    A night-light gave the
room a faint illumination. Bottles, a Spider-Man thermos, and some
wrappers littered a bedside table. Kyle was sprawled on the bed,
his bare feet sticking out of the covers, his round little face
looking naked without his glasses.
    Kyle looked just like
Travers had at that age, or like Travers would have if he had
preferred computers to basketball and comic books to track. They
shared a heart-shaped face and blond hair with the same cowlick
right in the center of the forehead.
    Travers had gotten the classic good
looks in the family—not that the family had been doling out looks.
All three children had been adopted. Vivian was slight and dark
with the curliest hair any woman had ever had; Travers was tall and
blond—the male equivalent of Clotho, if the truth be told; and
Megan was small and round, “round” being the operative
word.
    Her parents had never said anything
about it, preferring to love their children as they were. If Megan
commented on her weight, her mother would smile and say that Megan
would grow out of it.
    At twenty-five, she was still waiting
for that miracle to happen.
    She approached the bed. Her nephew
looked so vulnerable there, his hand curled beneath his chin. She
reached for the sheet to pull it over his shoulders when something
growled at her.
    She leapt backward in complete fright,
her heart pounding. She hadn’t seen anything, but she had heard it.
She knew she had.
    A growl.
    Wasn’t it?
    Or maybe it was some weird
noise that Kyle had made in his sleep.
    She walked back to the bed
and heard it again. A huge growl. She was shaking. She had been
attacked by a dog when she was little—a German Shepherd that had
knocked her to the ground and bit her and growled when her father
pulled it off, wrestled it off, really—and she hadn’t liked dogs
ever since.
    But she didn’t see a dog.
    Was she losing her mind? First the
falconer on the highway (and the lights going out. What was that?),
then the Fates (had they really said that? Or had she imagined
it?), and now this imaginary dog.
    She steeled herself and reached for
the sheet again, only to hear a half-bark and feel the snap of
teeth as they closed near her hand.
    She yanked it back so quickly that she
nearly hurt herself. The side of her palm was wet. Drool? Slobber?
She couldn’t tell.
    “Aunt Megan?” Kyle was looking up at
her, his adorable face mashed together in a squint. “You’re
here.”
    “Indeed I am, boyo,” she said and went
to ruffle his hair, then thought better of it. “Everything’s gonna
be okay now.”
    He smiled, snuggled deeper into the
pillow, and sighed. Something moved across his shoulder. The
something was black and long and never-ending.
    Megan squealed.
    Kyle raised his head. “It’s just Fang,
Aunt Megan.”
    “Fang?”
    He reached over and snapped on the
light beside the bed. An obese dachshund guarded the space between
Kyle’s chest and Megan, its black eyes glittery and
fierce.
    “Fang,” Kyle said. “He’s my dad’s
familiar, but really, he’s my dog.”
    She hadn’t heard that right. “He’s a
what?”
    “Oh, yeah.” Kyle rubbed his eyes.
“Nobody told you.”
    “Told me