Bedeviled

by Maureen Child

  Eileen snorted but, when Maggie glared at her, went back to her reading. “So the Otherworld is where the Fae went when they left our world.”

  “Then where exactly is this Otherworld?” She couldn’t believe she’d just asked that.

  “It’s here—but not.”

  “Ah.” Maggie nodded. “That’s clear.”

  Eileen sighed. Was there anything more mortifying than having a kid take a patient tone with you? “It’s, like, on a different plane of existence.”

  Maggie laughed as she pulled into a left-turn bay. “Now you sound like your mom.”

  “I know, but maybe she’s right about this stuff. I mean, it would have to be here but not here or everyone would see Faeries, right? Not just us.”

  “We didn’t . . .” Oh, what was the point? Eileen was too smart to try to fool. They’d both seen Culhane, and they both knew he was a little less—or more—than human. “What’s it say in there about Mab?” The light turned green and she turned into the grocery store parking lot.

  “Mab is queen.” Eileen thumbed through her stack of papers, found the one she wanted and waved it like the Olympic torch. “Some people think she’s also this kind of Faery thing called Mara.”

  “Huh?” Maggie stomped on the brake when a moron backed out of his parking place, apparently trusting in God to keep cars out of his way.

  “It’s another name for Mab, I guess. It says that Mara is a kind of ‘malignant female wraith.’ ”

  “That doesn’t sound good.” Maggie frowned and pulled into the now-empty parking spot.

  “Really. Anyway, Mab is queen, and she, like . . . visits people when they’re sleeping and gives them nightmares.”

  “Oh, very nice.”

  “Yeah. Guess she gets bored or something. Anyway, women are in charge in Otherworld. It’s a completely matriarchal society, and the men are, like, second-class citizens, which isn’t good, really, but think about women being in charge.” She sighed. “I think it’s totally cool, because if women were in charge here, things would be totally better than they are now, and—”

  “Revolution later, information now.”

  Another sigh. “Okay.”

  Maggie turned off the engine, opened her car door and said, “Talk and shop.”

  Eileen followed her into the store and trailed behind as Maggie pushed a dark blue cart with a bad wheel. Over the whacketa-whacketa sound, Eileen continued.

  “Mab’s been queen for, like, forever, and they say that she’s really powerful.”

  Maggie tossed two boxes of Double Stuf Oreos into the cart and seriously considered a third.

  “The Fae warriors—like Culhane,” Eileen explained, in case Maggie had forgotten about him, “fight the battles Mab wants them to, and spend most of their time protecting the other Fae.”

  “From what?” Maggie asked, and grabbed a box of Cheerios.

  “From demons, mostly. But there are bad Fae that have to be taken care of, too.”

  “Bad Fae?” Maggie wondered which side of the coin Culhane fell on.

  Eileen whipped through her stack of papers again. “Oh yeah. There’s all kinds of things in Otherworld. I told you about banshees and pooka, and there’re shape-shifters and demons and Gray men and dark men and demon brides—”

  “I get it.” The wheel on the cart got louder as Maggie moved faster, and she got a couple of baleful looks from other shoppers, like she was the one making all the noise. She reached for a gallon jug of milk, since she’d clocked Culhane with the one at home, then headed for the butcher department. “Lots of creepy-crawlies in this Otherworld.”

  Here, too, her mind whispered, reminding her of the thing that had eaten Joe.

  “Oh, they don’t stay in Otherworld,” Eileen said solemnly. “They come and go all the time. And they can make themselves look like us, so you don’t know if you’re talking to a Faery or a pixie—”

  “Wasn’t Tinker Bell a pixie? I think I’d notice if I saw a fluttery thing about four inches tall. . . .”

  “Okay, but—”

  “Spaghetti for dinner?” Maggie picked up some hamburger and sweet sausage and tossed them into the cart. She had pasta at home, so she didn’t need more. Wheeling the cart toward produce, she was forced to stop when a man and his cart were blocking the aisle. Men should not be allowed to grocery shop alone, she told herself. They didn’t know the rules. Worse, they didn’t care about the rules.

  Behind her, Eileen read, “ ‘Demons who kill members of the Fae capture their essence and use it to enhance their own strength. They must keep Faery dust in a recept ...’ ”

  “Receptacle,” Maggie murmured, still waiting as the old guy in front of her studied bottles of salad dressing. “Excuse me . . .”

  He ignored her.

  “Receptacle. Right. ‘If Faery dust touches a demon, the demon’s destroyed.’ Ooh.”

  Yeah. Ooh. Or ick. The memory of the Joe-eating demon was still fresh in Maggie’s mind, and she really didn’t want to dredge it back up.

  “Seriously?” Shaking her head, she spoke up just in case the old guy in front of her was deaf as well as rude. “Could you just move your cart to one side so I can—”

  Slowly the man swiveled his head to look at her, and his eyes were narrowed slits of solid black in a time-worn, weathered face. Evil pumped from him in what felt like thick, dark syrup. Maggie jerked and instinctively tightened her grip on the cart handle. It snapped in two, and the old guy smiled at her.

  Not a happy smile, either.

  “Uh-oh.” Eileen sounded scared.

  Maggie was, too. But her niece’s worried voice was enough to jolt her into action. Pulling the girl behind her, she stared at the demon shopper and said, “Get out of my way.”

  “You reek of Fae power.” His voice was a sly whisper that scraped across her raw nerve endings like sandpaper. “I could take it from you.”

  “You could try.” Oh, good bluff. Could he actually hear her knees rattling? She backed up, dragging her whacketa-whacketa cart and Eileen with her. Keeping her gaze fixed on the man she now knew was an enemy, she watched as his eyes changed from an inky black to a watery gray, and only then did she begin to draw an easy breath.

  He couldn’t do anything to her here. In the middle of Albertsons? It wasn’t as if he could kill her and get away with it. People wouldn’t just announce, “Cleanup in aisle five” and let him go.

  No, she was safe, and he knew it.

  “Go on, then,” he told her, still smiling that weirdly chilling smile. “I’ll find you another day.”

  “Bring it on,” she boasted, feeling the need to do a little intimidating of her own. “How do you think I got this power, huh? By watching one of your pals turn into dust bunnies, that’s how. So maybe you should think about that.”

  His features creased into a worried frown, and Maggie felt a little better. Then she reached the end of the aisle and made a sharp right. “Screw the salad,” she told Eileen. “We’re going home.”

  Chapter Five

  By the following day Maggie was starting to get used to the whole power thing. Or maybe she was just delusional. She was still getting floaty at odd times, and she was strong enough that she had to remember to pick things up gently or all she was left with were shards of whatever she’d had before.

  Her eyesight was now incredible, but her ears were starting to look a little pointy—so thank God her hair was long. But the best part so far? Faery power did a real number on her metabolism, so she could eat as much as she wanted without worrying about it. Apparently flying/floating really burned up the calories. And she was thinking about putting in a bid to paint the local law office’s windows. Those fifteen-footers had intimidated her before, but now no window was too high—as long as she painted when there was no one around. Finally: good news. She hadn’t seen Culhane in a while, but she didn’t know whether to classify that as good or bad.

  Her hormones were disappointed, but Maggie wasn’t sure she agreed.r />
  Dinner was over, and Maggie and Eileen did the dishes together. In the otherwise quiet house they listened to the wail of the wind as it swept in off the ocean and rattled the windowpanes. Outside, the night was thick, and as cold as it got on a Southern California winter evening. Inside, lamplight burned, and Eileen sat at the kitchen table to do her homework, much as her mother and Maggie had done when they were girls.

  “I hate math.”

  “Who doesn’t?” Maggie reached across, tapped her finger on Eileen’s paper and said, “You forgot to divide that fraction first.”

  “How’d you know that? You don’t do math, either.”

  “Some things you have to learn, whether you like it or not.” Hmm. Hadn’t she just told Culhane she wasn’t interested in his version of education? Maybe she’d been wrong about that. Remembering that guy in the grocery store, she told herself that maybe this training was something she’d just have to do—at least until she found a way out of this mess. After all, if she could deal with numbers, how hard could training be?

  Eileen lifted her gaze. “Why do I need to know this? Isn’t that why people invented calculators?”

  Maggie’d once wondered the same thing, but since opening her own business she’d found it helped to understand more about numbers than you found on a keypad. “Who do you think invented calculators?”

  Eileen brightened. “Nerds?”

  “Rich ones,” Maggie pointed out with a grin. “Understanding math made them rich.”

  The girl blew out a single disgusted breath. “Fine, fine, but I’m going to be a writer, and we don’t need math.”

  “Yeah? What about making sure people aren’t stealing from you? And counting all your royalties? Knowing how much of your money you need for taxes and living and saving? And what about retirement?”

  “I’m twelve.”

  Maggie laughed. “Sorry. My worries. Not yours.”

  In the living room Sheba barked: three short, sharp bursts of sound that had Maggie leaping to her feet, with panic just a step behind taking hold of the base of her throat.

  “Sheba never barks,” Eileen whispered, turning her head slowly toward the open doorway to the living room.

  “I know.” Barking required energy, and all of Sheba’s was usually used to roll over during naps. Swallowing hard, Maggie turned, opened the pantry door and said, “Go. Go to your room, and stay there until I call you.”

  “Maggie—”

  “Eileen, move.” This secret passage snaked through most of the house, and her niece knew every inch of it. “Now.”

  Sheba gave a low-throated snarl that wormed its way through the air.

  Eileen scuttled through the pantry door and disappeared as Maggie closed it softly behind her.

  Scanning the kitchen, Maggie thought, Weapon, weapon, who has the weapon? What did she have? Well, hell, she’d conked out Culhane with a gallon of milk, so just about anything would do. Quietly she moved to the closest drawer and pulled it open, hoping it wouldn’t make that squealy sound it sometimes did.

  She was lucky. Grabbing up the first knife handle she found, she drew it out to discover she’d instinctively grabbed a cleaver. “Nice.” Not that she could see herself slicing and dicing anything, but she had to at least try. Eileen was her responsibility. And besides, this was her house.

  Sheba’s snarls cut off abruptly and became whimpers and then what sounded like doggy moaning. Oh, God.

  Maggie crept to the doorway and peeked her head around the edge for a look at the lamplit room. Everything looked just as it should. Except for the tiny, ugly man who was bent over rubbing Sheba’s belly.

  “Sheba, you slut.”

  His head snapped up, and icy blue eyes pinned her in place as surely as if she’d been chained to the floor.

  “About time you showed up,” he snapped. “I’m not getting any younger.”

  “Or prettier,” Maggie sniped right back. “What the hell are you?”

  The homely little man straightened up and lifted his chin until he was nearly three feet tall. Wizened, wrinkled cheeks made his face look as though it were falling, but those eyes of his were sharp and clear. His long silvery white hair streamed down past his shoulders, and the suit he wore looked to be green velvet, of all things.

  “Not what. Who. The name’s Bezel. I’m a pixie, and Culhane sent me here to train you.”

  “Why?” Maggie was really getting sick of people popping in and out of her house like she was the local bus station or something.

  “I owe him a favor, okay? And pixies pay their debts, despite what the Fae think.”

  “A pixie? How cool is that?”

  Bezel spun in a tight circle, looking for the source of that voice, and then scowled when Eileen stepped out of a panel beside a bookcase.

  “I told you—”

  “I know, but he’s a pixie,” the girl said, walking closer. “They’re nice.”

  “I am not,” he argued.

  “How come you don’t have wings?” Eileen looked him over, as if trying to spot where he’d hidden them.

  “Wings? What do you people read, anyway? Do I look like the kind of guy to have wings?”

  “But you said you’re a pixie.”

  “We don’t know what he is,” Maggie snapped, still holding the cleaver as she moved to grab Eileen’s arm and pull her up close. “Besides, does he look like Tinker Bell to you?”

  “Tink.” Bezel spat the name. “That sellout.”

  “Huh?” Was this happening? Was she really standing in her living room having a conversation with a pixie?

  Sheba whined for his attention, and the pixie dipped his long, thin fingers into her fur again to scratch. “Tink wanted to be famous, so she used a glamour—”

  “A what?”

  “A spell,” Eileen provided.

  “Oh.” Maggie stared at the girl. How did she know this stuff?

  “Made that Disney guy think she was all tiny and pretty, when I’m prettier than she is.”

  Good God.

  “So he puts her in his stupid cartoon movie, and pretty soon the only pixie anybody’s ever heard of is Tink.” He lifted his gaze. “She never lets us forget it, either. Always sprinkling pixie dust like we don’t all shed the damn stuff ourselves . . .”

  “Okay.” Maggie kept a grip on Eileen. “You say Culhane sent you?”

  “Why the hell else would I be here?” He glanced around the cluttered, homey room and shuddered. “Mortals. Always living in boxes. How do you stand it?”

  “Where do you live?” Eileen asked.

  “We don’t care,” Maggie told her before the little man could get started. “Where is Culhane?”

  “Hell if I know. Think the ‘mighty Fenian warrior’ lets me in on his plans? Not.”

  “You’re awfully crabby for a pixie,” Eileen said.

  “You’re awfully mouthy for a kid.”

  “Teenager.” She shrugged. “Almost.”

  “Well, that explains it.”

  A ripple of movement rolled through the room.

  “Finally,” Bezel said.

  Culhane appeared out of nowhere to stand not a foot away from Maggie. She jumped a little, then smoothed herself out. Honest to God. Could her heart stand all this strain? “Did you really send this guy?”

  “Bezel’s here to train you.” Culhane looked at the pixie. “Didn’t you tell her?”

  “Haven’t had a chance. Just got here.”

  Shaking his head, Culhane turned his gaze on Maggie. “Bezel will explain your new powers, show you how to control them. He’ll teach you what you need to know about the demons and how to protect yourself from them.”

  “Uh-huh.” Maggie’s grip on Eileen loosened as the girl maneuvered her way closer to Bezel the Ugly. “And what are you going to do? Just sit back and give orders?”

  The pixie laughed, and it was a scary sound.

  Culhane wrapped one hand around Maggie’s upper arm, and instantly she felt a sizzle of somethi
ng hot, delicious and just a little wicked dart up her arm and rocket around her chest like a crazed Ping-Pong ball. Then those sizzling sensations dipped lower, and everything inside her whooped with joy and expectation. Sorry to disappoint, she thought, and caught her breath as Culhane dragged her away from the others.