Bedeviled

by Maureen Child

  “It takes time.”

  “I don’t have time.” Maggie picked up his hand and lifted it from her leg. “Sorry to disappoint, but it’s November and I’ve got tons of work lined up. I’m way too busy to have a destiny.”

  A now familiar feeling of irritation swept through him. “I offer you a future and you turn it down to . . . paint pictures on glass?”

  “You don’t get to knock what I do for a living, Culhane. I happen to be the best glass painter in the county.”

  “It does not compare to what I offer you.”

  “You know, my life’s just as important to me as yours is to you, so why don’t you back off a little there, Lord of the Rings?”

  “Lord of . . .” Culhane shook his head, muttered a Faery curse under his breath and reminded himself fiercely that this woman was the one hope of Otherworld.

  “I mean,” she was saying as she scooted to the side and off the couch, “I’m glad to know why this is happening, so thanks for that, but seriously, it’s like some weird-ass dream, and I’d just as soon wake up and go paint Sam’s Hardware in the morning.”

  “You must—”

  “The only thing I must do is remember not to float,” she said, then grinned. “I’m doing it. Guess I can concentrate after—Damn it!” Sheba whimpered. Maggie frowned, then slowly sank back to the floor. “Okay. Better. I can do this.”

  “There is more to it than floating.”

  “You’re probably right, and I’m really sorry to hear you’re having trouble in Faeryland—”

  “Otherworld,” he ground out through clenched teeth.

  “Right. But the thing is, I’ve got a job already. And a house. And a dog.” Sheba lifted her head. “And a niece I’m watching until my sister’s finished getting her chakras lined up. I just don’t have time to be queen, but thanks for asking.”

  Could she really be turning him down? After all these long years of waiting for Maggie Donovan to come into her powers, was he going to be disappointed because a mortal woman wasn’t interested? No. Culhane refused to accept defeat. Since the time of the last Ard-Ri of Ireland, he’d defended his people and never surrendered. He would be damned to perdition before he would start now.

  “You’re becoming Fae,” he said, his voice a low rumble of disapproval that had her dark red eyebrows lifting in response. “You have no choice.”

  “There’s always a choice.” She fisted her hands at her hips, and his view of her breasts disappeared. “I’ll figure out this floating thing, and if any other powers crop up . . .” She blew out a breath. “I’ll worry about that when it happens. So, thanks for thinking of me, but no, thanks. Really, I’m good—”

  “Your powers,” he said, interrupting her again, because what choice did he have if he didn’t want to stand in this room for an eternity, “will continue to grow and manifest. You’ll need my guidance to learn to use them.”

  Her feet left the floor again, and, muttering in disgust, she squeezed her eyes shut and focused her mind. Though he’d been tried beyond all reason, Culhane respected the fact that she was learning so quickly to contain the power charging through her.

  An instant later Maggie dropped back to the floor. Then she opened her eyes, met his gaze and said, “All I really need at the moment is an anchor. And maybe a glass of wine before going to sleep and waking up tomorrow to find out all of this is just some twisted nightmare.”

  “Ignoring this won’t change what is.”

  She gave him a brilliant, albeit forced smile. “Worth a try, though!”

  As she scooted past him her breasts brushed against his chest, and for one split second they were both caught, swept up into a frenzied wash of need that seemed to thread cords around their bodies, tightening with every breath. Maggie swayed a little, looked up at him and accused, “Are you doing that?”

  “I’m not.” Culhane stepped back and away from her, breaking whatever bonds had temporarily linked them. He wasn’t interested in developing an attachment to her. All he wanted from her was the right to rule the Fae as her consort. And he would do what needed doing to accomplish that.

  With the bond severed her breathing came easier, and the flush of heat that had filled her cheeks drained away. “Good, because you may be a hottie, but I’m not looking for another man at the moment. Especially one who floats and refuses to peel me off the ceiling when I need him to.”

  His green eyes fixed on her face, Culhane felt her fear, her hesitation, as surely as if they were living beings swirling around them in the too-small room. He’d given her enough to think about tonight. Better that he return again later, when her powers were manifesting and she was more likely to accept his help.

  Dark brows lowered over narrowed eyes, he said quietly, “You can’t fight destiny, Maggie Donovan. When you accept that, I’ll be back.”

  He seemed to blur for a second; then he was gone. Maggie looked around the room, half expecting him to leap out from behind the furniture or something. But there was nothing. Just the scent of him still lingering in the air. Something foresty, clean and a little—okay, a lot—tantalizing.

  “Talk about your impressive exits.”

  Maggie painted Sam’s Hardware first thing in the morning. It was good to be back doing something normal. Something she was good at. The fact that she kept floating off her small stepladder was just a minor irritation.

  The brief storm had passed, the morning sun was already hot and they were heading for at least eighty-five degrees. Nothing like painting snow and trying to get all the paint on before the heat dried it up on the glass.

  Her arm was aching, so she took a break, half turned on the ladder and looked up and down Pacific Coast Highway. Castle Bay was a small town by anyone’s standards. Supposedly at one point in its history it had been a stagecoach stop, and really, it hadn’t gotten much bigger since then.

  These days it was more or less a pit stop for people exiting the freeway looking for gas or food or a bathroom break. Sometimes they’d spend a few dollars at the boutique shops or the half dozen art galleries before continuing on to Monterey, Carmel, and all of the other tourist traps lining the West Coast. Castle Bay’s only real claim to fame was the haunted lighthouse on a spit of land jutting out from Smuggler’s Cove. Every Halloween the town was crowded with paranormal seekers and just plain weirdos. But other than that life was quiet, simple, uncomplicated.

  At least, it had been for Maggie.

  Up until yesterday.

  “Not a dream,” she told herself as she remembered trying to brush her teeth that morning while bouncing around the bathroom like a crazed SuperBall. She pushed one hand through her hair, remembered too late the splash of white tempera paint across her palm and sighed. A soft wind blew up from the nearby sea, cooling the sweat on her forehead as Maggie went back to what she knew. Snow. On glass. Merry Christmas.

  She’d painted these windows the year before and the year before that. She’d done the same for most of the businesses in Castle Bay. Just as, after the holidays, she’d be packing her paintbrushes around town to announce sales, clearances and moves to new locations.

  The problem was, Maggie was all too ready for a jolt in her life. Okay, the floating was a little disturbing, but at least it was different. The sad truth was, she was stuck in a rut. A comfortable one, to be sure, with her house and her family and her job—but still a rut. Everything happened every day just like the previous one.

  There was no excitement in her life.

  Well, until yesterday.

  “Poor Joe,” she murmured, remembering her latest ex-boyfriend. She’d broken up with him because he was boring. But the fact was, she was just as boring. Otherwise she never would have gone out with him in the first place.

  He’d been like her last four boyfriends. Safe. Dependable. It was like dating a grown-up Boy Scout. Her sister, Nora, had always been the adventurous one, romance-wise. She led with her heart, took risks and chances. . . . And see where that has gotten her? Maggie’s bra
in whispered. A husband who cheated on her, then left her for the family babysitter.

  After seeing her sister so crushed by love, Maggie had carefully selected only the straight-and-narrow guys to date. To protect her heart? Or because she was a coward?

  And why was she now wishing for a little . . . excitement?

  Instantly Culhane’s image rushed into her mind. The mental picture of him was so strong, so . . . great, she almost fell off the stupid ladder. Yes, he was dictatorial and pushy and probably crazy, since he insisted on this Fae business. But he was also sexy, interesting and so far from boring that his name couldn’t even be said in the same sentence with the word.

  Still, boyfriend material? Not likely. One-night-stand material? Absolutely. “If only I were,” she mumbled. But there was enough Catholic-schoolgirl guilt left swimming around in her bloodstream to keep her from indulging in one-night stands that were headed nowhere.

  So where did that leave her? No boring guys. No Culhane. No choice. That settled it. She reached out and swiped a brush filled with blue paint across a snowman’s hat. The minute she was through painting the hardware store windows, she was going inside to buy a shower massager. Screw men—Joe, poor bastard, Culhane and all the rest of the Y chromosomes in Castle Bay—no, make that California.

  She’d just be on her own. Who needed a man, anyway? She was good. Nothing wrong with a well-developed rut.

  Now she was even thinking in circles. What she really could have used at the moment was a little one-on-one time with an understanding female ear. Nice timing that both her sister and her best friend for more than ten years, Claire MacDonald, were out of town.

  How long was it going to take Nora to get her chakras aligned, anyway? And why was it so important that Claire rush home for a holiday visit? “Don’t they know I need them?”

  Maybe what she really needed was more friends.

  When the new cell phone she’d bought only that morning to replace the one she’d crushed rang, Maggie stuck her paintbrush into her mouth and dug one-handed into her jeans pocket. “ ’Lo.”

  “Maggie?”

  Think of the chakra. “Nora, hi,” she said once the brush was out of her mouth. She climbed off the ladder and leaned against the wall so she’d have something to hold on to in case she started floating again. “I was just thinking about you. How’s it going in Santa Fe?”

  “I have met the most incredible man. . . .”

  “Man?”

  “He’s . . . too good for words, so I’ll wait and let you meet him.”

  Maggie stiffened. Nora goes away for a five-day trip, finds a man and brings him home with her? Adventurous. Maggie felt more plodding than ever. “He’s coming home with you?”

  “Yes. He wants to meet Eileen and see where I live. Oh, Maggie, I think he could be the one. His name is Quinn, and he’s gorgeous, and ohmigod, the sex is planet-shifting wonderful!”

  “Sex? You’ve already had sex with him?” A woman dragging a screaming toddler behind her stopped dead and stared at Maggie. “I wasn’t talking to you,” she snapped, and went back to her sister, the romantic risk taker. “I can’t believe you, Nora. You hardly know this guy. Taking chances is one thing, but—”

  “Our souls recognized each other.”

  “Nora . . .”

  “Honestly, Maggie, you’ve got to crawl out from under your rock once in a while.”

  She’d been thinking the same thing herself a few minutes ago, but now . . .

  “No more about Quinn,” her sister said. “Trust me, you’ll understand when you meet him. So anyway, the drum festival was amazing. We all sat out under the stars last night. Blistering cold, but it was gorgeous. And Quinn kept me warm.”

  Maggie rolled her neck on her shoulders, stretching while her sister kept talking.

  “Weeping Buffalo—he’s our guide for this trip—says that tonight there’ll be an eclipse.”

  “Really? I hadn’t heard that.”

  “Well, we won’t actually see the eclipse. It’s on another plane, but it’s there and we’ll feel its power.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Nora laughed, and Maggie grinned at the sound. Her sister liked all of the woo-woo stuff in life, but even she didn’t really buy it all.

  “So how’s my baby girl?”

  “Eileen’s fine.” Maggie stepped back, looked at the hardware store window and then moved closer to add a touch of shading to the snow painted across the bottom of the glass. “Apparently a boy likes her.”

  “Oh, God. Tell me that’s not starting already.”

  “With you as her mom? ’Fraid so. And he’s an older man.”

  “What?”

  Maggie laughed. “Thirteen.”

  “Oh. God. Are you trying to kill me?”

  “Just keeping you on your toes.” She clucked her tongue. “Damn snow isn’t right.”

  “Is this snow on another plane with my eclipse?”

  “No, wiseass. I’m painting Sam’s Hardware.”

  “Okay, I won’t keep you.”

  “No, it’s okay,” Maggie said quickly, not ready for her sister to hang up just yet. She looked up and saw a pair of elderly women walking toward her. Wearing polyester pants, sensible shoes and bright shirts covered in splashes of color, the two could have been sisters. Their gray hair was in tidy rolls of curls that had been sprayed into submission. Lipstick smiles creased their faces, so she smiled back and waited until they’d passed to say, “I wanted to talk to you, actually.”

  “There is something wrong with my girl. What is it? Tell me, Maggie.”

  “This isn’t about Eileen. It’s about . . .” What? She couldn’t say she’d killed a demon and sucked in a lungful of Faery dust, could she? Instead she grabbed onto something Culhane had said the night before—about her being a descendant of the Fae. “Do you remember Gran’s stories?”

  “Of course I do. I’m the one who listened while you were out drawing pictures on sidewalks.”

  Maggie ducked her head, turned toward the window and stared into the hardware store. She didn’t want anyone on the inside of the store reading her lips. But the only one watching was Sam, who lifted his left arm and pointed at his wristwatch, as if to remind her time was money and she was supposed to be painting, not talking.

  She waved at him, then blurted, “Didn’t she used to say that she had slept with a . . . um . . .”

  “Faery. Yeah. Mom didn’t want her telling us the stories, because she said they were inappropriate, but I loved hearing Gran talk about this stuff. And once we were living with Grandma and Grandpa, I had her telling me the stories over and over again. She said she was seventeen and met this great-looking guy and he kidnapped her to the Fae world. Said she was there for a long time, but when she came back home she’d been gone only overnight.”

  “And she was pregnant.”

  “Yep. Gran told me that we were special. That we’re part Faery, and that’s why I’m so small and you’re so artistic.”

  “Uh-huh.” Maggie’s chin hit her chest, and a sinking feeling opened up in the pit of her stomach. True, true, all true, a voice was singsonging in her mind. Oh, God.

  “Of course, Gran’s folks looked all over for this guy,” Nora was saying, and Maggie tuned back in. “But they never found him. Then Grandpa fell in love with her, they got married, he adopted Mom, end of story.”

  “Right. And so our mom was supposedly—”

  “Half Fae. Yeah. She never believed it, of course, but I like thinking about it. And as much as Gran loved Grandpa, I don’t think she ever really got over her Faery lover.”

  “Fabulous. That’s just fabulous.” Was that a cold ocean wind rippling along her spine, or the twisted finger of fate making her feel a chill right down to her bones?

  “What’s this about, anyway? You’ve never wanted to talk about this stuff before.”

  “Oh,” Maggie hedged, “Eileen was on the Internet and she found—”

  “You let her on the Internet?
Were you there? Were you watching? Predators are online, you know. You have to—”

  “Wow, look at the time.” Maggie pulled the phone away from her ear to dilute her sister’s screech, then slapped it back long enough to say, “Thanks for calling. I’ll tell Eileen you love her. Have a good time with Crying Cow.”

  “Weeping Buffalo.”

  “Whatever!” She snapped her phone shut and, just in case, turned it off. No way did she need Nora calling back at the moment, since her mind was racing and her heart was frantically pounding in her chest.

  Culhane hadn’t been lying. She was descended from Fae. So . . . that led to another ugly question: Was Culhane right about the rest of it? Was she a destined queen?