Bedeviled

by Maureen Child

  “Troll!” He snorted. “I’m too tall to be a troll, and too damned pretty besides.”

  “Dear God.”

  He wheezed out a laugh. “Wait’ll you have some time to look around Otherworld. You’re gonna be remembering my handsome face with fondness. Some of those freaks over there are enough to turn my stomach.”

  This from a pixie known to mix tuna and Hershey’s syrup.

  Maggie was still struggling for air, so she used this chance to stall her mini-drill sergeant long enough so she could take a break. “I was there, remember? The Fae are gorgeous.”

  “Some of ’em,” Bezel allowed. “But my mother always said pretty don’t mean shit.”

  “A lovely sentiment. Look, I’m all teary.”

  “Hey, she knew what she was talking about. Some of those gorgeous Faeries are nastier than trolls. And that’s saying something, believe me.”

  “Great. So Otherworld is a mess, and even if I become queen I’ve still got problems.” As pep talks went, this one pretty much sucked. For three days she’d been working hard, devoting whatever time she could to being at Bezel’s mercy. The pixie was tireless when it came to running Maggie ragged. But she was determined. She was going to be stronger, faster, more powerful than even Culhane expected.

  Already she felt the difference inside her. It was just as Culhane had said: The longer the Faery dust was a part of her, the more it seemed that it always had been. She could feel strength running through her like a river. She hardly floated unexpectedly at all anymore, and once this battle was over she really did want to work on the whole flying thing. Her portals were being drawn more easily and looked a lot less shaky than they had only a few days ago.

  So all in all she was coming along fine. Would it be enough? God, she hoped so.

  “I just thought that Mab was the real problem,” she said, not really wanting to focus on all the other crap lining up in front of her like ugly department store lines on Christmas Eve.

  Bezel dropped to the lawn beside the dog, smoothed out the wrinkles on his velvet suit and said, “Mab’s the worst, but once you get past her there’re plenty of other things just waiting to take a shot at you.”

  “Fabulous.”

  “What? You were expecting rainbows and puppies?” He stroked one hand down Sheba’s head. “No offense, pooch. Otherworld’s just like anywhere else. Nice folks, crappy folks, strange folks, psycho folks.”

  “Stop.” She lifted one hand to shut him up. “You’re not making me feel any better, thanks. So if this is your idea of cheering me up, do me a favor and quit while you’re behind.”

  “Why would I be trying to make you feel better? Not my job, lady. I’m here to make sure you don’t get your clock cleaned.”

  “Feel the love.”

  “Look, gods know I hate to admit it, but Culhane’s right. You are needed there. That’s not saying you’ll be wanted. And it don’t mean everybody’s gonna throw you a damn parade or something.”

  “What am I knocking myself out for, then?” Maggie straightened up, pushed her hair back from her—dear God—sweaty face and glared at the pixie. “I’ve been damn near killing myself these last few days, getting ready for a battle I don’t give two shits about, while my sister’s off somewhere in fairy-tale land, and Culhane hasn’t even bothered to show his face!”

  “You doing this for him or for yourself?”

  “I’m having a rant here, not really looking for logic.”

  “I said you’ll be needed, didn’t I?” He shook his head, and his silvery hair lifted in the wind.

  “Yeah?” Maggie looked at the nice cool lawn, the soft grass, the patch of shade, and thought wistfully about stretching right out and taking a nap. Not proactive girl, but definitely happier girl. But true to the vow she’d made to herself, she dismissed the lovely thought of rest and instead threw punches. “Fae need me.”

  “I just said that. You don’t listen. Don’t you have any sense at all? Culhane’s told you that the Fae males are pretty damn sick and tired of being walked on.”

  “And? So? Yes?”

  His mouth screwed up as if he were chewing something nasty. “And your coming in to shake things up will probably kick off a civil war. So yeah, they’re gonna need you to put a stop to it.”

  “Huh?” Arms tired, Maggie started doing the kicks Bezel had shown her earlier. She felt like a sad, sad, way less flexible copy of Buffy, but what the hell. “If my involvement starts a civil war, how is that better for anybody?”

  “Change isn’t always easy.”

  “Wow. Very Zen. Thanks.” Frowning, she muttered, “A civil war. And I’m supposed to head that off at the pass?”

  “Otherworld has been the same damned way for thousands of years. It’s ripe for exploding. Fae hate pixies; pixies hate Fae. Dark men go after Gray men. Gray men are just creepy.”

  “Hold it.” Maggie held up a hand. “Gray men? What’re they?”

  Bezel shuddered and his lips curled back. “There’s lots more terrible things than them, but Gray men give me the trots.”

  “Oh, crap.”

  “Exactly.” Still shuddering, Bezel said, “They’re all gray and misty, like fog, but alive. They can be solid if they want, but usually they just stay all misty, damp and cold, and when they attack they sort of slide into you, making your insides all slick, like mossy rocks. . . .”

  Now it was Maggie shivering as the images rose up in her mind. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms to chase away the chill, but it didn’t help.

  Bezel shook himself. “Anyway, there’s lots worse than a Gray man out there, so why worry about them?”

  “Sure. Why worry?”

  Bezel took a breath. “So anyway, back to what I was talking about. Female Fae have all the power, and male Fae are sick of it. So, yeah, things are getting tense back at home, and you as the new queen are gonna have to deal with it. Otherworld’s gonna need you.”

  “Wow,” she said, taking another breather, since her legs were screaming at her to sit down. “You paint such a lovely picture of life in Faeryland.”

  “It ain’t pretty, but it’s home.”

  “Why the hell am I killing myself to get in shape to take on all that trouble?” Maggie tipped her face into the wind, letting it blow past her, through her, surround her. As a kid she’d loved the wind. It had always made her feel powerful, strong. Yet now she still felt unsettled.

  Bezel pushed himself to his feet, waddled over to her and said, “Because. Destiny picked you as the lucky lottery winner. Otherworld needs a kick in the ass, and you’re just the human to do it. Some back home figure a mortal’s got no place in Otherworld. Me, I figure you’ve gotta be better than Mab.”

  Amused in spite of everything, Maggie said, “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  He tipped his head back, stared into her eyes and grudgingly admitted, “Yeah, well, you don’t suck so much anymore. You’re learning.”

  “Enough?”

  He rubbed his beard.

  “Aunt Maggie!”

  “Training here!” Bezel shouted.

  Ignoring him, Maggie turned to watch Eileen jump off the back porch. “What is it?”

  “I just talked to Mom!”

  “What?” Maggie started toward the girl already sprinting across the lawn. Eileen’s grin was bright as daylight, her eyes were shining and her dark red hair flew behind her like a victory flag. “Is your mom here? At the house?”

  “No.” Eileen stopped and grinned even wider. “She’s in Otherworld, but Quinn opened a portal and I could see her. I saw him, too; he was right there with Mom, and the room was so pretty. All these crystals were shining in the sunlight and throwing rainbows around.” She paused. “They must have been prisms, not crystals, I guess. Anyway, it was way cool, and wait until I tell Amber. She’s gonna be so jealous that she didn’t see it—”

  “Aw, troll spit,” Bezel muttered.

  “Tell Amber? You can’t tell her about any of this, sweet
ie.” Maggie panicked a little. Bad enough her life was screwed. She didn’t want Eileen’s friends thinking she was a weirdo. There was absolutely nothing in the known universe that could be as cruel as a kid to one of their own. “Secret, remember?”

  “Not from best friends,” Eileen told her. “There’s a whole best-friend-only rule. Besides, Mom said you told Claire.”

  “That’s different.” Maggie caught the mutinous look on Eileen’s face, but couldn’t come up with anything to defeat it on short notice, so she went for distraction. “What’d your mom say?”

  Eileen sniffed. “She said she’s fine and I shouldn’t worry and she’ll be back as soon as you kill the queen.”

  “No pressure.”

  “Now that the hugging portion of the day’s over, can we get back to training?” Bezel glared at both of them.

  “She didn’t say anything about where she is?” The question was for Eileen, since it was clear Bezel wasn’t interested in chatting.

  “Nope.” The girl dropped to the grass and smiled when Sheba shifted position enough to lay her head in Eileen’s lap. “She only said she was fine and I shouldn’t worry and I should remind you to actually cook vegetables sometimes.”

  “My cooking?” This was what her sister’s message was? Remember to make Eileen eat vegetables? She shook her head, bit back anger that wouldn’t do any good, because Nora was who she was. That wouldn’t change. Instead she asked, “Did Quinn have anything helpful to add?”

  “Not really.” Eileen shrugged. “He just kept looking at Mom and smiling a really dumb smile.”

  Unexpectedly Bezel laughed. “This is great. Donovan women are mowing down the Fenian warriors. Something even the Tuatha couldn’t do.”

  “Who?”

  “Oooh.” Eileen turned on Bezel. “I read about them. Tuatha De Danaan.”

  Maggie only looked at her, stupefied. “How do you know this stuff?”

  Eileen gave her a proud smile. “It’s in my Faery research.” Then she turned to look at Bezel again. “But the legend says the Fae are the Tuatha.”

  “Oh, please.” Bezel rolled his eyes so high in his head, all Maggie could see were the whites. Very creepy. “Your people get it wrong all the damn time,” Bezel said with a scowl. “You’d think they could manage to write down a damn legend or two, but no . . . ancient vocal storytellers.” His voice went singsongy and sarcastic. “ ‘We don’t need to write it down. We remember. It’s what we do.’ Idiots. The Tua came to Ireland a long time ago and tried to roust the Fenians—the Fae—but Culhane and his boys drove the Tua underground.”

  Maggie’s head was reeling. Every time she thought she’d caught up, new information came her way.

  “But the legends say that the Fae moved underground and—”

  “Why in Ifreann would the Fae want to live underground? What? We don’t like sunshine? Do we look like moles to you? The Tua went under because they had no choice. It was go underground or die. They eventually became Bog spirits.” Bezel’s long, wrinkled nose wrinkled even further, like he was smelling something disgusting. “There they stay. They live under the bogs in Ireland, and they’re always plotting ways to get out. Which ain’t gonna happen as long as the Fae are around—” He stopped, tipped his head to one side and studied Maggie thoughtfully. “Hmm. Just another reason for you to take over in Otherworld. Mab’s bored with the whole Tua problem, and one of these days she’s not going to send the warriors to push ’em back into their peat pits. Then they’ll get out and—”

  “And what?” Eileen was leaning in toward him, eagerly soaking up everything the pixie had to say.

  “Don’t really know,” he admitted. “But it won’t be pretty.”

  “This is fascinating. My research tells me that—”

  “Hey,” a voice called out from the back of the house, “is this a private confab or can anyone join in and—Jesus Christ!”

  Maggie turned and saw Claire MacDonald stop dead in the yard, her gaze fixed on Bezel, her mouth hanging open and her eyes wide enough to swallow up most of her face. She lifted one hand and pointed a shaky index finger at Bezel. “What the hell is that?”

  “Time is getting short.”

  Culhane turned around, tearing his gaze from the lighthouse just offshore to look at the warrior beside him. He glared the other man into silence. “We all know that, O’Hara. That’s why we’re here.”

  O’Hara stepped uneasily from foot to foot, his giant frame rippling with the movement. He threw a quick glance over his shoulder, as if half expecting to see Mab herself striding up behind him. “We should be meeting at the Conclave. We have wards there. Magic to keep us from being overheard. Meeting in the mortal world is risking too much.”

  Several of the other warriors murmured in agreement, though none of them was willing to say it aloud. Culhane knew how they felt, though. Meeting here in Castle Bay was a risk. But a calculated one. He wasn’t willing to hold a meeting at the Warriors’ Conclave until he was sure of all of his brothers’ loyalty again. He never would have guessed that a day would come when he wouldn’t trust his men. But these were dangerous times.

  His gaze swept the beach, but he barely noticed the few humans dotting the sand. The ocean was gray and frothing with a coming storm. A cold wind blew, scattering sand in its path, and when the first stray drops of rain spat from the sky, the few hardy souls walking the shoreline ran for home.

  But the humans didn’t worry him. He scanned the area again, more carefully this time, searching futilely for a shimmer of power. A hint that Mab’s spy, whoever he was, was watching the warriors meet. But there was nothing, and he had to wonder if there actually was a spy at all. Or was Mab simply using what power she had to reach out with her mind to try to catch her warriors in something?

  Shaking his head, he pushed those thoughts aside, strengthened the wall of Faery power that kept him and his men hidden, then looked at each of the six warriors he’d summoned in turn. “We meet here because Mab’s grown more suspicious. She knows about Maggie Donovan.”

  “What? How? Mab hasn’t been on this plane, and when Maggie was in Otherworld she was at the Conclave.” McCulloch’s voice was deep and rumbling, just below the roar of the ocean.

  “She doesn’t know of Maggie herself,” Culhane explained. “Only that the Fae power was released from the amulet and claimed by someone else. She’s charged me with killing Maggie.”

  McCulloch grinned. “Then she’s safe.”

  “For now,” Culhane hedged. “How Mab knows, I’m not sure. She is either keeping a closer watch on us herself, or—”

  “There may be an infiltrator among us.” Riley looked disgusted at the very thought. “Has it come to this, then? Warriors turning on warriors? Isn’t it enough that our own queen treats us no better than bridge trolls? Must we now guard our words from our own brothers?”

  Another rumble of outrage and anger rippled from the gathered men, and Culhane felt the strength of the connection among them. He and these six men had been together for millennia. They’d served in the Tuatha wars together, had stood side by side and back-to-back in more battles than he could count. He trusted each of them with his life. What was more, he trusted them with Maggie’s life.

  But there were over a thousand Fae warriors, and Culhane wasn’t as sure of all of them. Eyes narrowing, flickering with the cool rage he felt within, he said only, “If there is a traitor in the warrior ranks, we will find him. There’s no place in the Conclave for a brother we cannot trust.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Muldoon muttered. “Warriors won’t turn on each other.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Culhane told him. “Until we know for certain, though, all we can do is be on our guard. Be wary.”

  Curran shifted a look at the others, then said, “We have something else to consider here. There’s talk of revolution among the males, even if Maggie Donovan fails in killing Mab.”

  “She won’t fail.” Culhane knew it. He’d been waiting centurie
s for Maggie’s arrival. According to the words of the prophecy he’d first read so long ago, he knew that she would do exactly as she’d been destined to do.

  “There was a riot in the streets last night,” Curran told him. “The warriors were called out to halt it, and we ended having to guard the palace half the night from the crowds shouting for Mab to show herself.”

  It was all coming to a head now, and there was no way to avoid it, even if a small part of Culhane wished that he could do exactly that—not for his own sake, but for Maggie’s. The thought of her fighting Mab filled him with dread as with the expectation he’d been nourishing all these long years.