Absolutely Captivated by Kristine Grayson Page B

money to find the dog and what does she do? Sends me away from
my work to come here to meet you kids, and pretends like the dog
has a complaint. Has he said anything? I mean, really.”
    “Has anyone given him a chance?” Zoe
asked.
    The girls were watching Zoe with
frowns on their faces.
    “What kind of chance?” the redhead
asked.
    “To tell you what happened,” Zoe
said.
    “Well, we asked him, but all he did
was bark,” the cornrow girl said.
    “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Zoe said,
hating that expression because it showed she had been among the
mortals too long. She wished she could take it back. “Did one of
you give him the power of speech? Or did you forget that little
magic lesson?”
    “What power of speech?” the blond
asked.
    Zoe shook her head.
“Morton?”
    He shrugged. “It was your idea to send
us here. I wasn’t going to falicitate it.”
    “Facilitate,” Zoe said. “and I didn’t
sent you here, at least not on purpose. I sent you to the
Fates.”
    “We are the
Fates ,” the girls said in
unison.
    “You are not,” Zoe said.
“Unless someone cast a really nasty spell on Clotho, Lachesis, and
Atropos.”
    “I told you,” said the redhead. “We’re
not the them you were expecting.”
    “Actually, you didn’t tell me,” Zoe
said. “She did.”
    And even as she nodded to
the blond, Zoe felt the rest of her argument die in her throat.
These girls were speaking in a certain order. Just like the other
Fates. And they spoke in unison. Just like the other
Fates.
    And they were in the right
place, only it was a mess. In a way that the other Fates would
never, ever have allowed.
    “We’re Brittany, Tiffany,
and Crystal,” said the cornrow girl, “and we’re the new
Fates.”
    “Kinda,” the blond added.
    Zoe blinked and looked at Morton. He
shrugged.
    “Listen, I already been through this.
What I get is that these little chickies are the Interim Fates
because their Daddy don’t want the old Fates to be interfering with
his lifestyle no more. If these kids can do the job, they get it
for good. But they gotta apply, just like everybody
else.”
    The women in Zoe’s office had said
they were the Fates. They had said they were laid off from their
jobs because Zeus was making a power play, and they would have to
reapply for those jobs, after they learned a few new
skills.
    Zoe felt cold.
    “Is Zeus your daddy?” Zoe asked the
girls.
    “Well, duh !” they said in
unison.
    Morton grinned.
“They are kinda
cute.”
    “Cute my butt,” Zoe said, putting her
hands on her hips. “How old are you girls?”
    “A hundred, maybe,” said the redhead,
obviously lying.
    “Which one are you?” Zoe
asked.
    “She’s Crystal,” the cornrowed girl
said, and Zoe felt that dizziness she always got with the original
Fates. The rotating conversation was maddening.
    “And you are?” Zoe asked.
    “She’s Tiffany,” said the
blond.
    “And the pretty one who just talked to
you is Brittany,” said Morton, earning a glare from the other
two.
    “Figures,” Zoe said.
    She took a step closer to the table,
and realized as she did so that her left foot was wet. The pee must
have soaked through her shoe. She suppressed a sigh.
    “You girls aren’t a
hundred,” she said. “You haven’t gone through puberty yet, let
alone menopause. How many rules did your Dad break
here?”
    “Daddy never breaks rules,” Crystal
said.
    “He’s grandfathered in,” said
Tiffany.
    “Actually, he made most of the rules
so he knows what he can and can’t do,” Brittany said.
    “In other words, he broke the cardinal
rule,” Zoe said. “He gave you girls magic before your hormones
settled down.”
    Morton shot Zoe a
frightened look. She tried to ignore him. Zeus had already caused
enough trouble for mages. It was his arguments that allowed men to
gain their magic at twenty-one and women to wait until after
menopause. And he was the one who exempted all the Powers That Be
from all of the rules, although Zoe