by Erica Ridley
She set the lemonades on the square glass coffee table and kept the margarita.
“You two are awful chatty.” She settled onto a couch near Trevor, at the opposite end of her mother, and licked the edge of her margarita glass. Chunky salt crystals coated her tongue, then disappeared behind moist lips. “What are you talking about?”
Arabella smiled. “Marriage, for one.”
“Venus and Aphrodite, Mama, he’s a human!” Daisy jerked upright, sloshing ice, salt, and wet liquid to the floor.
“And that should answer your second question.” Arabella patted her daughter on the knee. “Marriage regarding your father and me, not you and this charming human.”
“Oh. Right. Carpet runners.” Daisy grimaced at the mess spreading across the floor. “Would you…?”
“Of course.” Arabella plucked a wand from a basket beside the couch and zapped the floor. Spotless. She pointed at Daisy’s glass. Instant refill. She aimed at Trevor.
He recoiled in alarm.
Arabella laughed. “I’m just teasing you. “ She dropped the silver wand back into the basket. “Settle down.”
Trevor tried to settle down, but not until after he double-checked to make sure the pink wand still protruded from his back pocket. In case of emergency, he hoped it could make more than pumpkins. Speaking of which…
Worry tensed his muscles. “Where’s Katrina?”
“Kitchen counter.” Daisy gestured toward the swinging doors. “She wanted a margarita but I thought it’d be a bad idea, what with her flaming candle and all.”
Good call. Trevor started to say so, and then frowned. “Why don’t you just make her human again?”
The front door opened and A.J. burst inside, the breadth of his wings barely squeezing through the wide double doorway. Trevor imagined large wings on a guardian angel were like large antlers on a stag—more for intimidation than aggression. But just in case the wings meant trouble, he eased the wand from his back pocket.
“I can’t.” Daisy toyed with her margarita. “I’m no good at spells.”
“Not true. My daughter makes a damn fine pumpkin,” A.J. corrected gruffly. His eyes narrowed at Trevor. “Much like you. Where did you get that wand?”
“My desk.”
Arabella gasped in recognition. “That’s Daisy’s!”
No kidding. Did Trevor look like the sort of guy who shopped for hot pink fairy accessories? “Finders keepers.”
“Hand it over,” A.J. demanded. “Now.”
“No.” Trevor gripped the handle with both hands, pointed star aiming toward the ceiling. He was disadvantaged enough without giving up his single source of power, girly as it may be. “I want to go home.”
A.J. took a step closer. “Not with that wand, you’re not.”
Arabella’s voice rose in indignation. “It’s Daisy’s.”
Daisy gazed at Trevor over the rim of her margarita. “It’s sparkly.”
“It’s against the rules.” A.J. held out an oversized hand like a parent waiting for a recalcitrant child to give up a stolen cookie.
“I want to go home,” Trevor repeated calmly. “And I want Katrina with me. In human form.”
“Son—”
Daisy finished off the second half of her margarita in one long draught and clinked the empty glass onto the coffee table. “I want that, too.”
What? A tic twitched in Trevor’s left eyelid, stretching his bruise. It was one thing for him to want to go back home to safety and sanity, but why was Daisy so eager to get rid of him? Wait a second. She had the teeth long before they were tangled and naked. If she carried around a Himalayan Lust Charm, it wasn’t on accident. It was because she wanted him!
He smiled. “You ‘liked’ me just fine back at the office.”
A growl rumbled deep in A.J.’s throat.
Arabella turned to her husband with a nervous smile. “Honey, let me take care of this. I’ll pop him and his assistant back to his office and do up a quick ForgetMe orb. Things will be back to normal in no time.” Her tone turned contemplative. “Well, as long as the Elders don’t find out.” She brightened. “But other than being completely against the rules, I don’t see a problem.”
Trevor glanced at Daisy. She slumped in her seat, gazing at her empty glass as though yearning for more tequila.
“The problem,” A.J. bit out and took another step toward Trevor, “is that this—this human—slept with my daughter.”
Trevor tightened his grip on the wand. Apparently, bending a sexy siren over an office desk incited reams of fatherly rage, no matter what dimension you happened to be in. But if there were no shotgun wedding to drag him to, what kind of retribution was A.J. planning?
“Sit, honey.” Arabella patted the empty space on the couch between her and Daisy. “Let’s talk about this.”
Daisy closed her eyes and crumpled against the arm of the chair. “Let’s not. Please.”
“What’s done is done,” Trevor said, keeping his gaze focused on A.J. The angel hadn’t made a single move to follow his wife’s…or whatever’s…advice. Damn. Trevor knew sitting would be seen as a sign of weakness. “If it makes you feel better, I didn’t want to sleep with her.” At A.J.’s renewed scowl, Trevor added, “I mean, of course I did, but I wasn’t going to do anything about it other than… Anyway.”
Daisy’s gaze tilted heavenward, a strangled expression on her face.
A.J. was far from appeased.
“Look, I couldn’t unsleep with her, even if I wanted to.” Trevor frowned to realize he wouldn’t want to. Accidental or not, forgetting their lovemaking was the major downside to the current plan. Now that some of the shock had worn off, he could admit to himself that he hadn’t exactly hated it. He’d been dreaming of doing just that ever since he met her. “But the one thing I can do is go back to Earth with my T.A. and act like none of this ever happened. Right?”
At three silent nods, relief coursed through his body. It was almost over. He relaxed his stranglehold on the wand and pictured what his next steps would be back on Earth.
He could pop back into his disheveled office at the very moment he’d left it, no longer worried about Katrina’s safety, never remembering the heat of Daisy’s body against his, the taste and texture of her hardened nipple against his tongue. Er, not that that was a primary concern.
But how did he feel about her remembering him? He shifted in his seat. Turned on, apparently. It was kind of erotic to think about a woman in another dimension, thinking about him, reliving his kisses, his touch, his cock.
Daisy’s next words shattered the fantasy.
“Do ForgetMe orbs work on non-humans?” She bolted upright and stared at her mother. “I want one too, Mama.”
Arabella nodded thoughtfully. “I can grant all the wishes of your heart. But first, let me fetch Katrina so we can take care of everything at once.” She rose from the couch and glided into the kitchen.
“What?” Trevor finally found words, and twisted to confront Daisy. “Why would you want to forget having sex with me? I know you enjoyed—”
A.J. stormed forward. “Why, you unrepentant little—”
“Stay back or I’ll shoot!” Leaping to his feet, Trevor pointed the wand straight ahead, arms flush and parallel. “I turned a purse into a leather pumpkin and I’ll do the same to you.”
“You’d turn a guardian angel into a leather pumpkin?” The horror in Daisy’s tone rankled. He preferred her looking guilty and miserable to outraged and disappointed. She raised a brow. “That’ll look fabulous on your entrance interview for Heaven.”
True. He lowered the wand to concede the point. A.J. chose that moment to leap into the air, spearing across the room.
Trevor instinctively swept the wand back upward, blurted his sole magic phrase, and let fly with the magic.
He missed.
The blast of glittery light from his wand streamed over A.J.’s shoulder and covered the wall just as the two-hundred-pound angel collided with Trevor.
The floating glass coffee table shattered beneath them.
The walls moistened and colored, suddenly dripping with strands of light-orange goo. The shards of glass beneath Trevor’s back hardened into greasy off-white seeds. A.J. knocked the wand from his fingers and reached for Trevor’s neck. Slime saturated their clothing. Stringy pulp tickled their faces like heavy cobwebs as the walls curved inward.
The room closed in around them until the porous orange walls squeezed against their skin and exploded with a Thanksgiving-scented blast of splattered vegetable innards.
“Congratulations. You turned my parents’ house into a pumpkin.” Daisy pulled a slimy glop from her hair. “You’re the second person in Nether-Netherland to earn that dubious honor.”
“Daisy was the first,” Arabella added helpfully, her arms clutched around Katrina the jack-o’-lantern.
A.J. shoved Trevor aside and struggled to his feet, goggling at the bright orange mess that used to be his home.
Trevor sat up, wiping pungent sludge from his forehead. “Well, I guess I oughtta be heading back to Earth. Will someone please hand me Katrina?”
A.J. whirled to face him, but before the livid angel had a chance to try any more of his heavenly jujitsu, a large black net dropped from the sky and tightened around Trevor’s body, binding him to the slippery grass like a gnat in a web.
“TREVOR MASTERSON,” a mechanical voice thundered. “By order of the Elders Upon High, you are hereby arrested for one count of Destruction of Property Belonging to a Government Official and two counts of Unsanctioned Use of Magic.”
Trevor’s head collapsed against the rope netting. He had no idea what kind of punishment went with charges like that, but when a horde of army-green creatures hoisted him over their shoulders, he knew it couldn’t be good.
Chapter 11
Daisy ripped her arms free of her parents’ grip and burst into the gigantic metallic sphere labeled Elders’ Minions: Nether-Netherland Regional Headquarters. She didn’t stop running until she faced the hawk-faced, lion-tailed receptionist.
“Where is he?”
“Who?” was the griffin’s bored response. He leaned back in his chair with a dramatic sigh as though Daisy had interrupted an important navel-gazing session. “Did you fill out the proper form?”
“Did I fill out a form?” Before she could tear the feathered wings from his furry back at the thought of completing any more paperwork, a stout green troll with an Elders’ Minions ID badge stomped around the corner.
“You’re inquiring about Trevor Masterson, I presume?” He gestured down a long, round hallway. “He’s in the Human Containment Compound.”
“The what?” Daisy blinked. Good Ganesh, hadn’t she ruined Trevor’s life enough? “I didn’t even know we had a Human Containment Compound.”
“We didn’t.” His eyes glared at her from both sides of his bulbous nose. “Until today, nobody’s been stupid enough to bring one here.”
Daisy bit back a retort. Technically, Bubbles was the one to bring Trevor to Nether-Netherland, but under the circumstances that wasn’t much of a comeback.
“I think you’re in enough trouble for one day, young lady.” Dad’s piercing gaze pinned her to the gravel floor. “Why don’t you let the Elders handle this? Besides, it’s dusk. Shouldn’t you be heading to work?”
“Work? If it weren’t for Vivian Valdemeer,” Mama said, “Daisy would never have met any humans in the first place.”
“If it weren’t for Vivian Valdemeer,” Daisy began through clenched teeth, then stopped.
If it weren’t for Vivian, Daisy would never have met Trevor. Never have licked his lips with her tongue, never have rubbed her naked body against his, never have indulged an impromptu romance, never have broken her mortifying four-year streak of celibacy.
“If it weren’t for Viv,” Dad said, shattering her salacious thoughts, “Daisy would still be working at the Neurophysics Compound.”
“And what’s wrong with that?” Mama planted her fists on her hips. “Neurophysicists may not make fairy, but they’re… special people in their own way. All scientists are special.”
“Shhh.” Daisy’s cheeks heated as she slunk a look over her shoulder at the smirking receptionist. “Please stop calling me ‘special’ in public.”
“Daisy just wants an opportunity to earn her wings and be a respected fairy,” her father boomed. “Vivian’s giving her that chance. Vivian earned her wings through hard work and perseverance. Daisy’d do well to mirror her example.”
“She was doing well enough on her own.” Mama patted Daisy on the shoulder. “With or without real wings, I’ll always be proud of you, honey.”
With or without real wings, Daisy wanted to melt through the floor.
“As I’m sure you’re well aware from Section V, Paragraph 14 of the Nether-Netherland Regional Headquarters code of conduct,” interrupted the troll with the ID badge, “the lobby of a government facility is not the appropriate place to air family issues.”
“Right.” Daisy inched toward the cylindrical metal hallway. “I’ll just pop in to see Trevor, then.”
Mama shot Dad a venomous look and grappled for Daisy’s arm. “I’ll come with you.”
The troll intercepted Mama’s reaching fingers. “I’m sorry, ma’am. One visitor at a time. And Miss le Fey visits no prisoners unless accompanied by a cell guard. Elders’ law.”
“Fine.” Mama swiveled to confront Daisy’s father. “I’ll meet you back home—once I finish re-conjuring it.”
With a flash of sparkling glitter, she was gone.
Dad’s wings twitched. “She thinks it’s sooo funny that some of us have to fly home manually.” He faced the empty space where Mama had stood and sighed. “I’d better hurry unless I want the silent treatment for the next month.” He twisted and jabbed his index finger in Daisy’s direction. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
Heat stung the backs of her eyes and she glanced away. Sure, her apprenticeship had been a cluster from day one. But she wasn’t on duty right now. She was at the Nether-Netherland Regional Headquarters. “What trouble could I possibly get into here? Trevor’s in lockdown.”
“And he better stay that way.” With that, her father turned and strode out the door.
Dad thought she was here to set Trevor free? Daisy nearly laughed. She could get in huge trouble for a stunt like that. Well, if they caught her doing it. Which they probably would if she was crazy enough to try. But if not, and she somehow managed to smuggle him and Katrina back home… well, then the Elders’ case would completely fall apart. No humans, no physical evidence, just hearsay. It’s not like they’d jet off to Earth to fetch evidentiary material for trial. That would be breaking the rules.
Hmm. Interesting idea.
She flashed her most innocent smile at the denizens of the semi-crowded waiting area and edged toward the curved tunnel leading to the newly minted Human Containment Compound.
Nobody stopped her.
She inched closer. Where was the alleged cell guard? She took a few slow steps down the hallway, wondering whether humming aloud would make her appear less suspicious or less innocent. She opted not to hum and concentrated on rounding the corner as surreptitiously as possible.
The second she was out of sight and earshot, she took off at a dead run until she arrived, breathless, at the burnished silver bars lining the single oblong compartment.
A yellow-eyed troll stared back at her from a few feet down the hall. Crap. They hadn’t been exaggerating the cell guard factor. She fluttered her eyelashes at him. He remained impassive. When Daisy made no move to speak or to come closer, he returned his focus to a crinkled copy of the Trans-Dimensional Times.
Sagging in relief, she turned to the view beyond the bars and let out a low whistle. As far as detention cells went, it wasn’t half bad.
A small, private bathroom hovered in one corner. A massive, four-poster canopy bed rested along the far wall. A calming waterfall hologram burbled and glis
tened on the facing partition.
Trevor stood in the center, soft tousled hair hanging in his dark, hooded eyes, arms crossed and jaw set, fuming. But even with the fuming and the arm crossing and the bruise purpling one eye, he looked absolutely delicious. Rumpled, dangerous, sexy.
Bad train of thought.
“Um, hi,” she ventured, not entirely ungrateful for the bars between them. “How’s it going?”
He gave a humorless laugh, his normally even tone now tinged with panic. “How did this happen? Why did this happen?” He stalked forward until both fists gripped the thick silver bars and his subtle, masculine scent wafted closer.
She backed up a step, away from his anger and away from his familiar scent. “I didn’t mean to cause you trouble.”
His eyes hardened mercilessly. “So says the thief.”
“Well… you got me there.” Daisy nibbled her lip. She tried to think of an ameliorative response and came up blank. “Would you be less mad if I dropped off silver dollars for each of the teeth I took?”
Veins protruding from his neck, Trevor rattled the bars. “No!”
“All right, all right.” She glanced from the still-reading guard back to Trevor. “I won’t.”
His knuckles whitened and his expression grew grim. “Where’s Katrina?”
“With my mother. Safe.”
“Good.” His dark lashes lowered, as did his voice. “What’s going to happen to me?”
“Nothing.” Daisy hoped to Hades that was true. “They might make you testify and whatnot before they send you back to Earth, but it’ll be me that gets into trouble, not you.”
“Good.” He pushed away from the bars with his palms and turned his back to her. She loved his back. And his shoulders. But she wished more than ever he’d stayed in Elkhart where he belonged. He stalked away from her. “You deserve trouble.”
“That’s not very nice,” she muttered, although she could hardly discredit his point of view. “I said I was sorry.”
With a derisive snort, he climbed onto the wide bed and leaned back against the pile of plush pillows.
