by Erica Ridley
“How did you not notice?” Trevor thundered.
“I was mad at her. Still am. What’s wrong with looking? Por Dios,” Alberto asked indignantly. “I should be able to look at anybody I want to. I mean, even if Daisy’s your girlfriend, I can’t help but notice how hot she is, right?”
Trevor closed his eyes. “Daisy is not my girlfriend.”
“Which means I can ogle her anytime I want, right? Anyway, I didn’t want Katrina to give me a hard time, so I sat in the back of the jet with my music up full blast and stared out the window until we landed. There’s no assigned seats or nothing, so I managed to avoid everybody.”
“And when you noticed Katrina wasn’t with you…” Trevor prompted.
“I was like, good.” Alberto sniffed. “Serves her right.”
“What?” Trevor choked out.
“Yeah, but then I thought, puta, I’m going back to cold, rainy Indiana and she gets to stay in Costa Rica with the hot chick! It just isn’t fair.” Alberto sighed. “Katrina really pisses me off sometimes, you know?”
“Alberto.” Trevor pushed off from the wall and started pacing again. “Listen to yourself. Why would Katrina suddenly decide to stay in Costa Rica with Daisy?”
“I don’t know.” Alberto paused. “Hot girly action?”
Trevor’s skin crawled with horror. Now there was an image of his star pitcher he really didn’t need to have. “Please don’t say that ever again.”
“Hey, wait a minute.” The blaring music cut off mid-song. “You don’t think she hooked up with one of the locals, do you? I mean, she’ll be on another flight, won’t she?”
“To be honest,” Trevor said, “I thought better of both of you. And now I don’t know what to think.”
Alberto sucked in his breath. “Am—am I in trouble?”
“I’m thinking it over. But ultimately, you’re not responsible for the team.” Trevor sighed. “I am.”
“So, are you in trouble?”
Trevor banged his forehead against a row of cabinets. Universities tended not to hand out tenure to professors who misplaced graduate students in Central America. Even if the student was a legal adult who willfully misplaced herself.
“We don’t know that yet,” he hedged, so as not to alarm his student. But he bet he was about to find out.
Bubbles deposited Daisy and Katrina-the-ice-pumpkin underneath the floating cottage. He immediately hopped off into the bushes as if wanting nothing more to do with the rapidly deteriorating situation. Daisy set the freezing pumpkin down on the lawn and wished she could hop into oblivion with her where-frog.
Unfortunately, Maeve happened to be standing two feet away, with a classic “you’ve got to be kidding me” expression on her face.
“So.” Maeve pawed at the ground with an idle hoof. “Whatcha got there?”
“Pumpkin,” Daisy muttered, avoiding eye contact by calculating the total surface area of the non-icy pumpkins littering her lawn. “Duh.”
“What’s the white frosty stuff? Freezer burn?” Maeve craned her neck forward.
“Unfortunately.” Daisy rubbed her pounding temples, kicking herself for digging an even bigger hole. “It’s Trevor’s assistant.”
“What?” Maeve goggled at Daisy. “You brought a human to Nether-Netherland?”
“She’s not human anymore. Besides, what was I supposed to do? Leave her in Costa Rica? Not without a ForgetMe orb.” Daisy knelt next to the pumpkin and brushed a hand across the top. Yikes. Still freezing cold. Poor Katrina.
“I see your point.” Maeve slunk an involuntary glance around the open countryside, as if checking for magical spies. “But she’s at least got to be able to alert us if she needs help, right?” Maeve cocked her head to one side and considered the frozen pumpkin. “Let me just defrost her a bit and…” She chanted under her breath. “Voila!”
Daisy stared in dismay.
The good news? Katrina was no longer a frozen pumpkin. The bad news? Katrina was now a basketball-sized jack-o’-lantern.
A furious, if well-lit, bright orange jack-o’-lantern.
“What the hell is going on here?” demanded the flickering jack-o’-lantern, cutout teeth gnashing in fury. “Did I eat a rotten enchilada?”
“Neither.” Daisy half-wished she were the vegetable. Or were pumpkins a fruit? “You used to be an ice pumpkin and now… you’re not.”
“You’re a jack-o’-lantern,” Maeve added with a flick of her violet mane. “And I’m Maeve. May I call you Katrina?”
Flames rose behind Katrina’s triangular eyes. “You can call a cab to get me the eff out of crazy town, that’s what you can do.”
“First off,” Maeve said, tossing her glossy mane down her back. “Don’t be so ungrateful. I could have let you stay an ice pumpkin.”
“Why was I an ice pumpkin in the first place?” Katrina spat at Daisy, voice rising. “I let you use my cellphone. That’s international roaming!”
“Sorry,” Daisy mouthed and backed up a few more feet. “I’m new at toothfairying. I used to be Head of Hard Sciences at the Neurophysics Compound.” She crouched down to be eye-level with Katrina. “Look, I want to turn you back into a human, I really do.”
“Then do it,” Katrina shrilled, hysteria giving her voice a sharp, soprano edge.
“Trust me,” Daisy said, sitting back on her heels. “If you de-pumpkin here in Nether-Netherland, we’ll have more trouble than any of us want to deal with.”
Worse, somebody had to erase Nether-Netherland from Katrina’s memory when they took her back to Earth, and there was no way Daisy could do it on her own. Worse still, there was no way Maeve’s hooves could fashion a useful ForgetMe orb. How were they going to get the jack-o’-lantern back to its home?
“Why should I trust you?” Katrina’s eyes swung from Daisy to Maeve the flying horse and back again.
“You can trust me because I want you gone just as much as you want to be gone. I just need to take care of a teensy-weensy tooth issue real fast, and then I’ll get you back home as your normal self.” Daisy affected her most confident expression, hoping her horror and desperation weren’t broadcast on her face. “I promise.”
“You better. I need my hands to smoke. Or strangle you. Whichever.” Katrina’s cutout mouth frowned. “What am I supposed to do in the meantime? Hang out in this field with a bunch of other pumpkins? How many people have you done this to?”
“You’re the first.” Daisy forced a smile. “And yes, it would be lovely if you would stay here and stay quiet while I come up with a plan. Do you mind?”
“Hell yeah, I mind. I’m missing school, for one.” Katrina blew seeds and pulp across Daisy’s feet. “And for two, how boring is that?”
“I’ll pumpkin-sit,” Maeve offered with a sigh. She inclined her head toward the large barn floating on a magic cloud next to Daisy’s cottage. “Since you’re supposed to be on house arrest.”
Daisy gave her best friend a grateful smile. “Thanks. I owe you.”
“Don’t you forget it.”
After wiping the pumpkin pulp from her feet, Daisy crossed over to the hedgerow and knelt in front of the bushes to find Bubbles. Desperation ate at her belly.
She had to fix this situation, and she had to fix it fast. If she could just use a Mortal Locator, she could find Trevor’s coordinates, get the tooth, have Maeve de-pumpkin Katrina and maybe then Daisy could finally get her life back together. Assuming she somehow got her hands on a ForgetMe orb. If only horse hooves could weave that sort of magic!
“Bubbles, would you come out already? Quit playing around. I’ve got to go to the office before anyone else gets there.”
The tiny where-frog hopped from his perch on a yellow-tipped leaf onto Daisy’s outstretched palm. He shot a pointed look over her shoulder toward the mouthy pumpkin talking Maeve’s ear off, but he zapped Daisy into her darkened office without delay.
Out of habit, she sucked in her breath and listened for Vivian. It was before office hours, s
o with luck... She froze when a high-pitched voice filtered through the wall. Terrified, Daisy cocked her head to listen. Her mouth fell open when she realized the voice she heard yelling in the waiting room wasn’t Vivian’s after all.
What in Hades was her mother doing here?
“I asked you not to mentor my daughter,” Mama was shouting. “She’s a talented scientist with a promising neurophysics career. Or at least, she was until you put this tooth fairy notion in her head. Daisy’s always dreamed of real wings and doesn’t understand that you have to be magical in order to make fairy.”
At those words, Daisy’s lungs squished into cold, slushy goo. Now she knew where her mother’s loyalties lay. Or didn’t, to be precise.
Daisy crept past the Tooth Fairy Transporter on the other side of Vivian’s office. The shiny Mortal Locator hung in its gilded frame, centered on the wall. Bubbles could take her anywhere she wanted to go, but only if she knew where she wanted to go. Too bad Trevor had left Costa Rica without a clear forwarding address.
Daisy stared at her reflection in the Mortal Locator’s mirrored surface until a cloudy whirlwind twisted in the glass.
“Earth, Human Dimension,” Daisy murmured, careful to keep her voice low. If Mama and Vivian caught wind of this unauthorized investigation, the trouble would only worsen.
The small planet’s blues and greens swirled into focus. Humph. This was easy. Daisy’d have to beg Vivian for a turn at hunting up the assignments once in a while.
“Indiana.”
A wide expanse of green plains and golden crops flooded the surface. Pretty.
“Elkhart,” she requested softly.
Rather than farmland, roadways and rivers and precisely blocked neighborhoods swam in the aerial view. She had to be close.
She took a deep breath. “Trevor Masterson.”
The image panned to a small white cottage with a two-car garage and an immaculate lawn. A shiny black car pulled into the driveway. The door opened. Trevor unfolded himself from behind the wheel. He strode up to the house, unlocked the front door, and disappeared inside.
“Perfect,” Daisy breathed, suddenly aware the voices in the other room had ceased. She had to hurry. “Address, please.”
“555 Briarwood Ct” flashed around the edges of the frame.
From the other end of the office, the Tooth Fairy Transporter’s gears whirred. Daisy raced over to it in alarm, pressing everything she could see to turn it off. Nothing worked. It must start automatically after a successful address retrieval. Which would be great if she didn’t have a where-frog of her own. And if she knew how to work the thing. Dials lit and flashed, lighting up an assortment of standard-issue tooth fairy homing rings. Tufts of pixie dust plumed out from the access panel.
An ear-piercing screech blared through the office. “Illegal Teleportation Attempt! Illegal Teleportation Attempt! Illegal Teleportation Attempt!”
“Aargh,” Daisy choked, nearly apoplectic with panic. She punched in her access code, banged every button and flipped every lever in a frantic, futile attempt to shut off the brain-melting clamor. Nothing.
Note to self: Reprogram the Mortal Locator’s automatic configuration.
The big golden door flew open and bounced against the office wall. Mama and Vivian bounded into the room. As they ran, their faces twisted into twin incredulous expressions.
“Bubbles,” Daisy gurgled desperately as both her mentor and her mother sprinted toward the shrieking Transporter at full speed. “Briarwood Court. Now. Please.”
With a beleaguered sigh, Bubbles snuggled into Daisy’s trembling palm and complied.
Chapter 5
Trevor sat on the edge of his recliner, but did not lean back against the soft leather. Instead, he was hunched over, elbows over knees, poring through a worn Spanish-English dictionary.
The private jet company’s twenty-four-hour hotline had turned out to be both expensive and an utter waste of time. He hoped like hell he could locate Katrina before the other students realized she hadn’t returned, and rumors of a terrorist kidnapping, prison stint, or alien abduction flew around the school. None of which boded well for tenure… or Katrina.
He lifted his face from the dictionary and stared broodily into the unlit fireplace. She had sworn never to repeat her Indianapolis stunt. If she broke her promise and decided to take an extended fiesta with the locals, then she deserved academic punishment for her actions.
But if she didn’t take an impromptu vacation… If she hadn’t broken her promise and was actually stranded in Central America…
A tiny pop echoed from inside Trevor’s bedroom, as though someone muffled the sound of a champagne bottle uncorking. He leapt to his feet, eyes narrowing at the empty hallway.
Before placing his brief international phone call, Trevor had gone into his bedroom to toss his button-down shirt into the laundry basket and trade his chinos for jeans. As far as he could recall, no champagne bottles lurked inside his bedroom. And even if he’d filled his closet with liquor, champagne tended not to go about opening itself.
Tense, he kept still and waited, listening for further sounds.
Nothing.
Maybe the noise was just the central air kicking on, knocking one of his signed baseball cards from its little plastic stand. After all, sometimes a noise was just a noise. Probably he was overreacting.
He slid a Louisville Slugger out from behind the couch just in case.
Holding the grip with his right hand so the bat hovered above his head, the fingertips of Trevor’s left hand made contact with the door. He slammed the door open with his hip and swung into the room with a loud, “Hiiyah!”
“Oh, hi, Trevor.” Daisy knelt on all fours beneath his sheets—beneath his sheets—and rummaged below his pillow. “I wondered if you were still home.”
“You what?” Trevor choked, dropping the bat and staggering backward. The slugger fell to the floor with a thunk before rolling beneath the bed. “You hear that? That could’ve been your skull. What were you thinking?”
“That you wouldn’t hit me?” She fluffed his pillow with both hands, her derrière, once again, aimed right at him.
Of course he wouldn’t hit her. He hadn’t been in a fight since high school, and he’d never hit a female in his life. All the same, having a “tooth fairy” pop up uninvited in his bedroom didn’t exactly inspire warm fuzzy feelings. She’d have to be stupid to think he—Wait a second.
No way could a stupid person track him from his dig in Arenal, Costa Rica to his home in Elkhart, Indiana that fast.
Either she was a psychic psycho with limitless time and money on her hands, or she was working undercover for someone with an agenda. And there was exactly one person who not only hated Trevor enough to sic a pseudo-fairy femme fatale on him, but who also might have just enough analytical socio-anthropological skills to determine exactly what kind of woman he’d find irresistible.
Berrymellow.
Well, screw him. Trevor wasn’t falling for the sexy tooth fairy routine. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t realized the truth sooner. It explained everything. Why else would an English-speaking blonde randomly appear on a dig in Central America? Alone, barefoot, and trying to confiscate his find? Sure, she’d thrown him off with her painted toes and fairy talk, but now he was onto her.
Or rather, now she was on his bed. No doubt intending to seduce him into confessing everything he’d discovered in Costa Rica, so Berrymellow could undermine Trevor’s progress or steal his research outright.
“How did you get in here?” he demanded as Daisy fluffed another pillow. “And what in the world are you doing?”
“Me? What about you?” She rolled to her back and propped herself up on her elbows, her tanned skin in perfect contrast with the snowy white of his sheets. Her breasts pointed skyward and her head lolled just enough to expose the smooth curve of an eminently kissable neck.
Definitely his taste. And definitely trying to seduce him.
“I live he
re,” Trevor reminded her, and then reminded himself not to be affected by wide eyes and enticing curves. His body ignored the order. “What’s your excuse?”
“I looked for you in Arenal. You weren’t there.” She nibbled on pouty pink lips and glared at him through lowered lashes.
Fine. She wanted to play it like that, did she? Well, she could try to seduce him all she liked, but she wouldn’t get any answers. In fact, two could play at this game. Let her see how she liked being on the receiving end of some ulterior-motive charm.
“No, I’m not there,” Trevor agreed, letting his voice go low and rough. “I’m right here.”
He kicked the door shut behind him. She jumped, the movement jiggling her in all the right places. But instead of giving him that wide-eyed ingénue stare, she now watched him warily, as though realizing the balance of control had just shifted from her to him.
Good.
Maybe having Daisy cavorting around in his bedroom wasn’t a bad thing. Maybe this was his chance to figure out who she really was, what secrets she was after, and how to stop her dead in her tracks. Hey, maybe they could even have wild hot monkey sex before he turned her over to the police.
Trevor smiled. Daisy looked doubtful.
He stepped forward until his jean-covered knees brushed against the blue comforter. “When you saw Katrina at the airport, you’re sure she didn’t mention where she was going?”
“Nope.” Daisy’s eyes widened as though startled by the question. “She was rather… cold.”
Cold was Katrina’s middle name. Or maybe “smart ass”. Either way, if Katrina didn’t mention Elkhart before she took a late Spring Break, the only way Daisy could wind up in his bedroom was if she had another informant. Say, for example, a disgruntled professor armed with a staff directory.
“How did you find me?” Trevor asked, careful to keep his voice calm and modulated as he ran the tips of his fingers along the corner of the bed.
Her hazel eyes tracked his every movement. “I’m not supposed to tell, and you wouldn’t believe me if I did.”
