Totally Spellbound Read Free Page B

what?”
    “About the magic.”
    She’d wandered into
a Twilight Zone episode, only life hadn’t become black and white. Maybe it
was an episode of Punk’d, and Ashton Kutcher would reveal himself at any
moment.
    That wouldn’t be so bad,
right?
    The dog was still staring at
her.
    “Does it bite?” Megan asked, nodding
toward the dog.
    Kyle put his hand on the dog’s back
and pressed it toward the sheets. “That’s my Aunt Megan,” he said
as if the dog could understand him. “She’s one of the good
guys.”
    The dog lay down and then
sighed, as if a huge burden had been lifted off it.
    “You still didn’t answer me,” she
said. “Does it bite?”
    “No, he doesn’t,” Kyle said,
“unless you’re like totally evil. Or
incompetent.”
    She blinked, trying
to make sense out of all this. The women in the next room had been
watching one of the Lord of the
Rings movies. Maybe they’d let Kyle watch
it before he went to sleep. Maybe he was still half asleep, which
was why he was talking so oddly.
    “If he doesn’t bite,” she said, being
careful with the pronoun, “why did you name him Fang?”
    “Because he told me that was his name.
His previous owner called him Bartholomew, which Fang thinks is
stupid, but he doesn’t mind it when Zoe calls him Bartholomew
Fang.”
    “Zoe? Is she one of the women
outside?”
    “Nope. She’s a detective. She thinks
my dad doesn’t like her because she’s too old, but he doesn’t care.
And she doesn’t look that old anyway.”
    Megan had to be in
a Twilight Zone episode. This conversation was too complicated for Punk’d .
    “A detective?” Megan pushed her hair
away from her face. “What’s going on? Is your dad in
trouble?”
    “No.” Kyle shoved his pillow against
the back of the bed, picked up the obese dog, and moved it—him—to
one side. Then he patted the space where the dog had been, like he
thought Megan should sit in it, doggy smell and all.
    She gave the blanket a
sideways look, squared her shoulders, and then sat down. It was
still warm from that dog body. The dog watched her, but didn’t
growl any more.
    “It’s okay, Fang, really,” Kyle said
to the dog. “She’s just cautious because some big old dog tried to
kill her once.”
    That was as blunt as
anyone had ever put it. She’d never told a soul about her fears.
Even her father had said the dog wasn’t trying to hurt her—all the
way to the hospital, where they’d given her rabies shots and five
stitches in the bite on her shoulder.
    “Fang says that other dog was stupid,
and he’d only have hurt you if you’d have hurt me.” Kyle still had
his hand on the dog’s neck.
    The dog was looking at Megan as if
indeed it—he—had said those words. In fact, it—he—had that
expression people got when they expected an answer.
    Kyle’s expression mirrored
it.
    “Thanks, Fang,” Megan said as
sincerely as she could. “I’ll work on the trust issues.”
    The dog nodded—or it
seemed to nod—then it (he, dang it!) circled three times and lay
down beside Kyle.
    “You’re cool, Aunt Megan,” Kyle said.
“I didn’t know how much dogs scared you till just then.”
    Uncanny. She always forgot
how uncanny this kid was, how supernaturally intuitive. Just like
Vivian when she was little. Everyone was convinced Viv was psychic.
Megan had learned in all her psych courses and her subsequent work
that there was no such thing as psychic. But there were amazingly
in-tune people who could read signals better than most. Vivian had
that skill, and somehow, Kyle had acquired it too.
    Kyle’s cheeks were red, as
if what he had just said had embarrassed him. He plucked at the
blanket.
    Megan tried to get the conversation
back on track. “If your dad isn’t in trouble, what’s he doing with
a detective?”
    “Besides kissing her?” Kyle
asked.
    It was Megan’s turn to blush. She
hadn’t seen Travers with a woman since Cheryl had left him and baby
Kyle over nine years ago.
    “Yeah, I