Bedeviled

by Maureen Child

  “No, I didn’t take him back,” Maggie snapped. “He was eaten!”

  “Hmm. Didn’t see that coming. What? Hold on, Mags.” She must have half covered the phone with her hand. “For the love of God, Mother, I’ll actually pay you to give me five bleeding minutes on the phone all by myself.” When she came back, Claire said on a sigh, “Well, call that ten pounds well spent. So. Joe was eaten, you say? Demon?”

  “How do you know about demons?”

  “Visions.”

  “Right. But apparently not full-coverage visions, huh? I mean, you would have told me about Joe being snack food if you’d known, right?”

  “God, yes. That’s just so awful. Poor Joe.”

  “Poor Joe? Let’s have a little sympathy for the innocent bystander, okay?” Maggie tucked her quilt tighter around her. “So these visions. There are some things you miss?”

  “I didn’t say they were perfect,” she muttered. “And think about it: If I had told you about what losers Todd and Mike were, what then?”

  “Then I’d have had a warning that they were creeps.”

  “Oh, please. Everyone but you knew that already.”

  “Nice. You still could have warned me.” One more time, Maggie flopped back against her pillows.

  “And of course you’d have believed me.”

  “Hmm.” Maybe not. “Good point.”

  “Look, Mags, we can talk about the other stuff when I get home. I only called because of what I saw. It’s about Nora.”

  Maggie sat up straight, the cold forgotten as the quilt pooled in her lap. “What about Nora?”

  The phone went dead.

  “Claire? Claire!” Maggie shook the damn receiver as if it would help, then scowled at it when the line remained silent. Stomach pitching wildly now, she fought back a rising tide of panic. “What the hell? Nora? She had a vision about Nora? What’d she see?”

  “Maggie.”

  “Jesus H. Christ!” She threw the phone and shrieked as the air rippled in front of her and Culhane appeared out of nowhere. “Stop doing that! If you’re trying to kill me, it’d be easier to just hit me over the head or something.” She slapped one hand to her chest as if to keep her heart where it belonged.

  “I wasn’t meaning to scare you, only to talk with you.”

  “Well, I’m talking to my friend. Or I was.” She scrambled to retrieve the phone, hung it up, then lifted the receiver to call Claire back. Find out what the hell she’d seen in her vision about Nora. But there was no dial tone.

  “Damn it. What’s wrong with the phones now?” She glanced across the yard at Nora’s little house and thought about sprinting over there to check on her sister and her niece. But it was the middle of the night, and she knew they were fine.

  Wasn’t Quinn the Viking there? If there was danger, which Maggie didn’t want to believe, then he was more than capable of dealing with it.

  Unless, she told herself suddenly, he was the danger.

  On that disturbing thought, she jumped out of bed, brushed past Culhane and grabbed her jeans off the easy chair beneath the window. “No time for you now, Culhane,” she muttered. “I’ve got—”

  He simply reached out, grabbed her upper arm and pulled her to him. The air left her in a rush when her chest hit his, and just for a second she forgot her sister, her niece, hell, even her own name. Staring up into his eyes she watched as those pale green eyes went even paler than normal until the soft color blended in with the whites and she felt as though she were staring through windows into eternity.

  Oh, boy. Now she was getting as crazy as the world around her.

  Heat she couldn’t deny slipped through her, chasing away the cold that Claire’s phone call had built, and for that she was grateful. But, she told herself as she tore her gaze from Culhane’s captivating stare, she couldn’t fall into a swoon here. She had to check on Nora. Eileen.

  Family first, then her hormones.

  “Let go.”

  “No.” His grip on her shifted, tightened as he wrapped both strong arms around her middle.

  Pressed along the length of him, Maggie felt every inch of his hard body, and her own responded instantly to a particularly hard region of his. Yet more heat pooled low in her belly, and need reared up inside her. Her breath was strangling in her lungs as his big hands smoothed up and down her spine, defining her curves, sliding over the thin fabric of her nightgown.

  She looked up at him again. Big mistake, she realized as she found herself lost in his eyes. Even through the haze of what she could only think of as a complete body meltdown, she felt him respond to her nearness. Felt his heartbeat quicken as hers did and knew, when he only strengthened his hold on her, that he was caught in whatever silken vise held her.

  Oh, she’d never felt this before, and Maggie, for a moment, luxuriated in it. The fire, the heat, the soul-swamping lust.

  She wanted him more than she’d ever wanted anyone or anything. But there was something else there, too. Beyond the lust. Beyond the heat. Beyond the yearning. There was a thread of connection that had been there from the moment they’d first met in her kitchen. From the first time he’d appeared in her life and told her that her world was about to change.

  She didn’t entirely trust it. Didn’t know if she wanted it, even. But she wanted him. That there was no doubt about.

  Here was the excitement she’d dreamed of. The man who could make her feel more than she’d ever thought to. The shake-up of the very comfortable rut she’d made for herself. And oh, she was ready.

  So ready.

  “You’re beautiful in the moonlight,” he said, and the soft music in his voice played on her every nerve ending. “It would be better, easier, if you weren’t,” he admitted, lifting one hand to stroke her hair back from her face, only to then touch his fingertips to the curve of her ear.

  She shivered at the caress, but it was heat driving those shivers now, not the cold.

  “I’m not beautiful,” she argued. “Nora’s the beauty. I’m the creative one.”

  He smiled, one of those rare actions that never failed to make Maggie’s breathing catch in her throat.

  “You’ve no idea what you are. Your beauty is there for anyone with an eye to see it. But it’s not only your beauty that pulls at me.” He sighed and let his hand drop to her waist. “It’s what’s in you. What you’ll do. Who you’ll be.”

  That stiffened her, made her step back from the heat, away from the want. Locking her gaze with his, she asked, “And if I’m not what you think I am? If I can’t do what you expect, then what?”

  He shrugged, and she had to admire the slow ripple of muscle. “It’s impossible. You are the one.”

  “I don’t want to be the one,” she murmured, and her voice was lost in the darkness. Half turning from him, she looked out the window and focused again on that solitary light burning in Nora’s window.

  Two weeks ago she’d known who she was, what she was. Now that had been stripped away, and she didn’t have any idea as to what was left. Was she still Maggie Donovan? Or had the Faery dust already begun turning her into someone . . . something else? And if she wasn’t Maggie, then who was she?

  “You wonder,” he said, moving up behind her, laying his big hands on her shoulders until she felt both the weight and the warmth of him sliding into her. “You wonder what comes after.”

  She lifted her chin, trying to push her doubts and worries aside. But they remained, niggling at her, tugging at her until she responded the only way she could. “You’re the one with the private pipeline to the future—why don’t you tell me?”

  “Possible futures,” he reminded her, using the same words her friend had just a few minutes ago.

  Remembering Claire and the phone dying on her and Nora in danger . . . “You have to leave. I have to go see Nora.”

  “Not now.”

  “Yes, now. Don’t tell me what to do.” Maggie pushed her hair back and stabbed her index finger at him. “You may be some hotshot wa
rrior where you come from, but here you’re only a guy who shows up without being invited—too damned often—to be a pain in my ass.”

  “Maggie—”

  “Go away.” Please go away, her brain pleaded. She didn’t need to be drawn to him, to the very man who’d tossed her life upside down. She didn’t have time for a man in her life, and if she did, she sure wouldn’t be picking a guy who could appear and disappear whenever the hell he wanted to. “I mean it, Culhane, go away.”

  He only sighed. “Your training’s begun, and still you don’t believe. Your power grows, and still you won’t listen. Perhaps it’s time you see.”

  Moving for her jeans, she glanced at him. “See what? No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. Go away. I have to get dressed and—”

  He didn’t listen, simply waved one hand in front of her, and just like that, Maggie was dressed: jeans, dark green sweater, even her tennis shoes were neatly tied.

  “Impressive,” she finally said.

  “It’s time for you to see,” he repeated. “I should have done this earlier; I realize that. But I wanted you to have time to understand what’s happening to you. Now I know you won’t truly comprehend it until you’ve seen for yourself.”

  “Seen what?”

  He only shook his head, wrapped her in his arms and tucked her head beneath his chin. Maggie knew she should have tried to push away—for all the good it would have done her. He was huge, after all. Way stronger than she was. Then there was the simple, humiliating truth that she liked him holding her. Liked the way he felt pressed along her body. Liked the way it made her feel.

  All of those thoughts and more flashed through her brain in an instant as the air around them seemed to shimmer. Maggie’s vision blurred as swirls of color and shapes dazzled her eyes. She felt wind sliding past her, and a sense of movement.

  Okay, this was new.

  Instinctively she closed her eyes, clung to Culhane, and felt his arms around her tighten in response.

  Moments later, when all movement stopped, when the wind blowing around them ceased, Maggie cautiously opened her eyes again. She almost wished she hadn’t.

  “Okay,” she said, more to herself than him, “we’re so not in Kansas anymore.”

  “Kansas?” He frowned at her.

  She gave him a wry smile. “I guess not everyone’s seen that movie. Never mind. Where are we?”

  “You know where we are,” he said, his voice low and close to her ear. “This is Otherworld.”

  Culhane hadn’t planned to bring her here so soon. And certainly not at this moment. But he’d been watching her as she slept, then had heard the telephone conversation with her friend. He’d had to end it, hadn’t he? He couldn’t have Maggie interfering with his plans for Nora. Even now Quinn was making the move Culhane had decided was necessary. Soon Maggie would know what the stakes in the battle were.

  But he would be the one to tell her, not her friend.

  So he’d blanked the phone, tapped the power with his own and shut the blasted thing down. After that he’d had no choice but to adjust his plan. Keeping Maggie with him now was the only way he knew to bring it all home to her. To show her what was needed.

  What she was meant for.

  Now Culhane looked at his home through her eyes as she turned in a slow, deliberate circle, trying to take it all in. She had no way of knowing that Otherworld was as large as her own. That she couldn’t see the whole of it at once.

  His gaze slid over what was, to him, the familiar, and he wondered what she thought. Roads paved with silver bricks wound through the heart of the city and shone bright under noonday sunlight. Trees as old as time spread heavy branches out, entwining one with another until bridges were formed, linking the trees and the homes within them. Windows, carved into the tree trunks themselves, marked the homes of both pixie and Faery.

  In the distance shining buildings speared up from flower-laden ground, looking like magic wands. In the far distance, dominating all below it, rose the crystal towers of Mab’s palace, bright in the glare of the suns.

  When Maggie turned toward him, an expression of pure astonishment on her features, he cupped her face in his hands. His thumbs brushed across her cheeks and sparked fires under his skin. As a look of shock and bewilderment crossed her face, he knew she felt it, too.

  The feel of her beneath his hands was heat and more. There was magic here. A kind he didn’t want. A kind he hadn’t planned on. A kind he couldn’t—didn’t even want to—ignore.

  He’d sensed the beginnings of a bond between them even when she was no more than a child. Hadn’t he felt the threads connecting them, stretching and pulling, though loosely then? Hadn’t he guessed those years ago that her destiny was more than just the saving of Otherworld?

  In centuries of living, fighting, protecting his people, Culhane had never felt for a woman what Maggie Donovan incited inside him. She made him want. Made him desire. Made him need.

  And he was still unsure what he thought about that.

  Brushing those more-than-disturbing thoughts aside, Culhane focused his attention on the here, the now, the essential.

  “It’s beautiful.” She turned in his arms, looked up into his eyes and narrowed her own as she did. “But why am I here? Why’d you bring me here, Culhane? This isn’t my world.”

  “It will be soon.” He shook his head. “Frown at me if you must and deny it if you can, but you feel the power growing within you, and that you can’t ignore forever.”

  She stepped back, as she seemed to do more often than he’d like. “I’m not talking about my so-called powers,” she said. “I’m talking about you taking me off to fairy-tale land. I don’t belong here. This isn’t my place. I already have my world. My life. My family. Heck, my dog.”

  “If Mab isn’t stopped, what makes you think that family, that world, will be safe from her?”

  “Why would she care about us? She has all of this.” She swept one arm out to encompass the glimmer and shine of Otherworld. “In my world people don’t even know Mab exists. They think of her as a legend. Lucky bastards.”

  “This place won’t be enough for her forever. She knows there are other places, other dimensions. Over the centuries she’s grown more and more dissatisfied. Her own greed will spur her on to take what she doesn’t already have. And she’ll want all the worlds under her reign.”

  Still frowning, still denying, she flattened her mouth into a thin, tight line. As stubborn in her own way as Mab herself, Maggie wouldn’t acknowledge the truth unless it was thrown in her face. Which was why Culhane had had to bring her here.

  He grabbed her before she could skip out of reach, and when she tried to pull away he only tightened his grip. Drawing her in close, he stared into her eyes. “You wonder what the future is? Where Mab’s ambitions will take her? Then see it now for yourself.”

  He turned her to one side, waved his hand, and the air shifted, swirled, reality bending. Otherworld dropped away as an assortment of images rose up from the fog and produced other realities.

  Here the Faery war bled into Maggie’s world. Here people were screaming, cut down in the streets as demons and Fae alike fought for supremacy. The humans didn’t stand a chance. The powerful beings from Otherworld slashed and burned and took what they wanted, leaving only charred rubble in their wake.

  The scents, the sounds, the images were so clear, so real, Maggie trembled in his arms.

  “Oh, my God.”

  Culhane ended the demonstration and waited until she lifted her gaze to him before speaking. “She’ll do it, Maggie. Believe me. If not now, then soon. Mab will eventually want it all.”

  “How am I supposed to stop a Faery queen, Culhane?” She scraped her hands up and down her arms, a nervous habit he’d noticed her indulging in often. “She’s a queen, for God’s sake. And I’m—” She stopped, laughed shortly and admitted, “I’m no threat to her and you know it. I can’t be the one you want. I can’t be your destined whatever. If I were
I’d know it, wouldn’t I? Wouldn’t I be stronger or braver or—”

  “You are all you need to be, Maggie Donovan. You must trust me that it will be more than enough. You’ve only to believe. To try.”

  She blew out a breath and turned her gaze back to the vast, shining sweep of Otherworld. Her voice, when it came again, was tired, soft. “Say I do believe—hypothetically. How do I fight her and win?”

  “We’re going to work on that while you’re here,” he said.

  “While I’m here? I can’t stay here indefinitely. I have to go home. Nora and Eileen . . . not to mention Sheba—”

  “Won’t miss you.”

  One dark red eyebrow lifted. “Thanks very much.”