Must Love Magic

by Erica Ridley

  He clicked to read Katrina’s comment. Don’t know what this means, but it was in the margin of your notes. He’d thought the incongruous name was part of a grifter con. But what if it wasn’t?

  “Did you mean what you said?” Daisy asked suddenly. His gaze jerked to hers and she blushed at the sudden eye contact. “About wanting to forget me. Wishing we’d never met.”

  His jaw clenched. That damned Truth Spell.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said, his voice sounding scratchy and strange even to his own ears. “And I don’t wish we never met. I just want my life to get back to normal.”

  “You didn’t hurt me,” she said quickly, her hand fluttering in an “it was nothing” gesture.

  “Daisy, I…” He paused. He’d been around enough women to know wounded pride when he saw it, but how much of himself was he willing to give away in order to assuage her hurt feelings? “If it makes you feel better,” he said, and then cringed at the unholy badness of that opening, “it’s not about wanting to forget you. I did and do find you attractive even without the Himalayan Lust Charm. But you’re a fairy. From another dimension. And, apparently, some kind of tooth felon. Which means we could never be anything—not even friends.”

  Chapter 14

  The top of Berrymellow’s red head poked out from under the slanted door. He stared at them for a second and then slithered into the room with wide, blinking eyes.

  “Masterson!” he shouted, knocking the door even more off-kilter in his haste to greet Trevor. The unbalanced wood slid down the wall and clattered to the floor.

  “Doctor Masterson,” Daisy corrected haughtily.

  Trevor could’ve hugged her.

  “You.” Berrymellow’s shaking forefinger pointed at Daisy’s face. He scowled at Trevor. “Thought you said you turned her into a frog.”

  Daisy shot Trevor an annoyed glare. He shrugged. “I got better.”

  “Oh yeah?” Berrymellow clutched his omnipresent briefcase to his chest. He’d probably published thirty more pointless papers in the past ten minutes. “Then how’d you leave this office? I was waiting right outside the door.”

  Trevor’s fists clenched. He knew that sanctimonious bastard spied on him.

  Daisy inched closer to Trevor. “Maybe he left through the window?”

  Berrymellow tugged at his goatee. “Thus disappearing from an obvious crime scene? Hey. Wait.” He gaped around the office. “What happened to the crime scene?”

  “There is no crime scene.” Trevor leaned back in his swivel chair and propped his feet atop his desk. “What are you talking about?”

  “This!” Berrymellow’s arms widened, encompassing the tidy office. “I saw you come in here with her. There were noises. Crashes. Screams. And when I came knocking, there was only you standing in the midst of a mess. I knew you’d killed her, just like you killed Katrina.”

  “I’m right here,” Daisy offered.

  “I see that now,” Berrymellow snapped. “But Katrina—”

  “Is probably home in bed,” Trevor interrupted in his best professional-negotiator-talking-with-an-imbalanced-psycho voice. “We ran into her leaving campus an hour ago.”

  “You—” Berrymellow clutched at his bolo tie as if choking on his own reply. “Really?”

  “Really.” Trevor closed his laptop and slid it into his case. “What were you doing hanging around outside my office? Perhaps you’re not respecting professional boundaries.”

  “I was worried about you.” Berrymellow whirled to face Daisy. “Miss le Fey, why are you dressed up like a professor instead of a student?”

  “I am a professor.” She flashed him a brilliant smile. “Trevor—that is, Professor Masterson—and I are old college friends. I, too, am an anthropologist, but at another university.”

  He gazed at her appreciatively. Good one. She had to know at least as much about humans as Berrymellow did. Probably more.

  Trevor crossed his arms and froze his coworker with a glare. “Why were you worried about me?”

  “Well, first I was worried about Miss le Fey.” Berrymellow dipped in a sycophantic bow. “Or is it Professor le Fey?”

  “I prefer Professor Fey.” Daisy leaned against the edge of the desk and idly flipped through a binder. “It’s easier to remember.”

  Berrymellow shrugged and returned his focus to Trevor. “So anyway, I heard you come back—noises, anyway—and I knocked on the door again, but that time you didn’t answer. So I waited. And when the minutes turned into hours and the hours turned into days, how could I not worry?” He turned to Daisy again, eyes narrowed. “If you’re a professor at some other university, then what are you doing here?”

  “An anthropological study, of course,” Daisy said smoothly. She removed her cat-eye glasses from the front of her blouse and slipped them on her face. “While many of my colleagues have tried to infiltrate the lives of high school kids to document the trials of troubled teens in today’s society, I decided to pose as a college student and focus my energy on deciphering the interconnectedness between hazing rituals and post-baccalaureate dropout rates.”

  Berrymellow gaped at her in wonder. “That’s brilliant!”

  Trevor wasn’t so sure. The minutes had turned into hours and—what? His tongue finally found words to express his incredulity at the alleged time-lapse. “What exactly do you mean, ‘days’?” he demanded, his voice deteriorating into a dangerous growl.

  “Well, you disappeared Wednesday night, didn’t you?” Berrymellow gestured at Trevor’s Wrigley Field wall calendar. “And now it’s Thursday night. I guess that’s just one day, but still.”

  “Thursday,” Trevor seethed through clenched teeth, searing Daisy with a scowl guaranteed to melt lead. He swung his feet to the floor and stood, hooking the strap of his laptop case over one shoulder. “You have got to be kidding me.”

  “What?” She jumped off his desk, knocking over the plastic trashcan in the process. “You knew you stayed the night.”

  Berrymellow’s eyes widened with fascination. “You stayed the night with a visiting professor? What kind of college ‘friends’ were you?”

  “I thought,” Trevor bit out, “that you were taking me back to where I left off.”

  Daisy’s glossy mouth stretched into a nervous smile.

  “Where, yes,” she mumbled, pushing up her glasses with the back of her hand. “When, no.”

  “I missed all of today’s classes?” he roared, advancing toward her with icy fire racing underneath his skin. “I missed my appointment with the dean?”

  “And I humbly thank you for that,” Berrymellow said with a smirk. “Way to cement my tenure for me.” He bent down to right the toppled trashcan and gasped. “Ha!” His hand flew inside and pulled up a handful of broken phone. “I knew it!” he crowed. “I told you!”

  “Get out,” Trevor warned him softly, “before I cement your teeth into our connecting wall.”

  Berrymellow dropped the bits of phone and held up shiny palms. With an unrepentant shrug, he bolted from the room.

  Rather than meet his eyes, Daisy suddenly appeared fascinated by the ceiling tiles.

  “Fix this,” Trevor commanded, jabbing his index finger at her, then at the calendar. “I will not have that imbecile supplanting me in this university simply because I got embroiled in some inter-fairy courtroom drama. Fix this now.”

  “I’m sorry,” she stammered, her pretty face contorting into a pale, miserable expression. “But I can’t.”

  Daisy tried not to notice the expression on Trevor’s face go from horror to rage.

  She closed her eyes and slid her hands down over her hips. How could her palms be so sweaty and her fingertips so cold? And what was with this slippery non-absorbent material? She opened her eyes and glared at her dress.

  No comfy dress. Performance polyester.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, for what felt like the hundredth time. When would her messed-up life stop messing up his? “There’s really nothing
I can do.”

  “Oh?” The hint of forgiveness she’d glimpsed before Berrymellow’s arrival had vanished from Trevor’s eyes. “As a matter of fact, there is.”

  With one quick stride, he was at her side. He snatched Bubbles from her shoulder and strode from the office.

  Choking on a lungful of outrage, Daisy sprinted after him. “Give him back! Trevor! Wait!” She raced down the cold gray hall, chasing him past closed doors and around twisting corners. She stumbled twice, thanks to the unfamiliar pitch of heeled shoes beneath her feet, and almost lost him.

  At last, she followed him into a small white-tiled room and found him opening and closing cupboard door after cupboard door. She sagged against the doorjamb and debated going barefoot.

  “Where are we?”

  “Break room.”

  “Why are we here?”

  “I’m looking for something.”

  “What are you doing with Bubbles?”

  With one hand, he pulled a dented Harry Caray lunch box down from a shelf, flipped open the metal tab, and dumped its contents into the trash.

  He placed her where-frog inside.

  Daisy lurched forward to make a grab for Bubbles, but Trevor turned his back to her and lifted the refastened lunchbox high above his head.

  He stalked to the refrigerator and slammed open the door without making eye-contact. “What do where-frogs eat?”

  “Uh, meat,” she stammered. “He used to be a where-wolf.”

  “He used to be a were-what?”

  “Wolf. Not the lycanthropic kind, the teleportation sort. W-H-E-R-E. I accidentally transmogrified him into a frog while testing a first batch of scientifically engineered pixie dust. I haven’t been able to fix him yet.”

  “You screwed up some poor creature’s life? Imagine.” Trevor snapped open the lunchbox lid. He rummaged through the fridge and tossed a slice of bologna and a few saucy meatballs in with Bubbles. “Why not ask someone competent for help?”

  Daisy turned an automatic retort into a tight-lipped grimace. She deserved that.

  “They’ve tried,” she admitted. “Apparently, straight magic can’t always counteract scientific magic. Something to do with unnatural hybrid energy endangering the molecular balance between—”

  “Katrina,” Trevor interrupted, gaze narrow. “The talking pumpkin. Straight magic or scientific magic?”

  “Uhhh…” Crap. She stared at her shoes. “Scientific magic?”

  “You risked her life? And didn’t tell me?” He snapped the lunchbox closed, brushed past Daisy, and stormed out of the break room.

  “Wait,” she called, taking off after him, her heels skidding on the slick tile. “Don’t suffocate Bubbles!”

  He cracked open the lid without breaking stride. “He’s not immortal?”

  “Nobody’s immortal.”

  His steps faltered as he twisted his neck to meet her gaze. “You’re not immortal?”

  “No, of course not.” Daisy reached Trevor’s side. She wanted him to realize she was a bad fairy, not a bad person, but wasn’t sure there was much of a difference in his eyes. And she wanted to make a grab for the lunch box, but if she did, she was pretty sure he’d club her with it. “Where are you going?”

  “Home.”

  “Now?” She struggled to keep pace. “Why?”

  “It’s late,” he answered, without turning to face her again. “I’m too tired to deal with this crap.”

  “What are you doing with Bubbles?”

  “Keeping him away from you until my life is back the way I like it.” He sped up. “I’ve got to get some sleep and I don’t trust you not to poof back to Nether-Netherland in the middle of the night and leave me stranded.”

  Daisy was forced to jog to keep at his side. “Where are you going to put him?”

  “In an old aquarium.”

  “What about me?”

  “You’re a bigger fish.”

  Trevor ended up housing Daisy in his bedroom and taking the living room couch so he could keep an eye on the where-frog. He’d finally fallen into a fitful sleep after padlocking the aquarium closed, but he couldn’t stay asleep for more than an hour at a time.

  He’d never kidnapped a where-anything before—or an apprentice tooth fairy—but he knew better than to trust either one. “You’re Fired!” kept haunting Trevor’s dreams. When Trevor’s alarm blasted from his cellphone atop the rack of Blu-Rays next to his couch, he didn’t feel the slightest bit rested.

  Nonetheless, Trevor shut off the alarm and stumbled into the bathroom, only to discover his impromptu houseguest already in the shower.

  That woke him up.

  If he’d made better architectural choices, his shower door would be made of massive, floor to ceiling, see-through glass. His senses would be overcome with Daisy’s wet, naked silhouette through the steamy, beveled door. And they’d be three seconds away from getting it on.

  Well, if she weren’t an unbalanced scientist whose magically-challenged wand destroyed everything it touched.

  In any case, he hadn’t had the presence of mind to install clear glass shower doors. Instead, a blue vinyl shower liner flanked the inside of the tub and a white cloth curtain covered in Cubs baseball helmets hung on the outside. Both were pulled tight.

  “I need to take a shower,” he shouted toward the curtain. He parked himself right next to the sink to wait. She had to come out of the tub sometime.

  “So do I,” she hollered back, without so much as poking her head from the curtains.

  The spicy scent of his Irish Spring bar soap filled the air. Definitely not her usual. He should keep some sort of flowery, girly stuff on hand just in case hot fairies stayed over without packing an overnight bag. “Don’t you have some kind of… of magic shower?”

  “I left it at home,” she called back from the other side of the curtain.

  Then again, her running around smelling like him was kind of erotic, in an unsettling sort of way. He hated her again, Trevor reminded himself. She should try to smell like someone else. “Can’t you wave your wand and conjure one up?”

  “I left that at home, too.”

  “What?” He frowned. How was she going to fix things? “No wand? Seriously?”

  “Well, I didn’t know you were going to kidnap Bubbles,” came the defensive reply above the slippery sounds of water running over wet skin. “I thought this would be easy. Fast. In and out.”

  Easy. Fast. In and out. Trevor shifted his boxers as the memories flooded back. “But… I saw you poof out of your fairy outfit.”

  “Not with my wand, you didn’t.” The tips of her elbows appeared above the curtain, as though she were sudsing up her hair just beyond his line of sight. “I used my clothes powder.”

  “Clothes powder?” he repeated, barely following the conversation.

  “I carry it in my handbag. Makes it much easier to dress for work. And undress.”

  Dress. And undress. Right. Trevor stared at the open black purse flopped on top of the toilet seat. Without the clothes-powder, she’d have to stay as naked as the day she was born. Did half-angel tooth fairies even get born?

  Damn it.

  Trevor pushed out of the bathroom and slammed the door behind him. For a libidinous minute, he’d forgotten who she was and why she was there. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  He strode into the kitchen, plucked his red, white and blue Chicago Cubs coffee cup from the dish drainer, and beelined to the coffee machine. Thank God for automatic timers. Caffeine might not be as good a wake-up call as, say, hot sex, but it would help unmuddle his mind.

  Before he’d finished his second cup, Daisy sauntered around the corner. Not naked and glistening, as a lesser man might have hoped, or even clad in nothing but a fluffy white towel. Nonetheless, he had to admit she looked good.

  Once again, her hair was tucked into its tiny, nape of the neck bun and her cat-eye glasses nestled between her breasts. Today’s blouse was crimson silk, peeking between the open
lapels of a form-fitting black business jacket. He glimpsed a mouth-watering triangle of tanned flesh between the top two unfastened blouse buttons. Just a couple more and he’d have a great cleavage view. Not that he was interested in her chest.

  If it weren’t for the bare feet poking out from the tapered cuffs of the tailored black pants, he’d’ve thought she was, well, normal.

  “Shoes?” he prompted hoarsely, gesturing at her painted toes with his empty mug.

  She glanced at her toes. “Right.” With a flick of her wrist, she rose a few inches taller as her slender feet angled into strappy, high-heeled shoes. “I thought you were in a hurry. Don’t you want to shower?”

  Well, yes, that was somewhere on his unexpectedly reordered wish list of things to do this morning.

  He set his empty coffee mug in the sink and eased past her into the hallway. His knuckles accidentally-on-purpose grazed against the side of her thigh as he passed. How could he hate someone and want to screw her senseless at the same time?

  Catching sight of the hall clock, Trevor decided a nice, subzero shower temperature was probably best. He was running late enough as it was. No sense taking up even more time masturbating in steamy water while fantasizing about the magical disrobing power of clothes-powder.

  After drying and dressing the normal human way, he stopped by the pantry to leave the where-frog a snack before heading for work.

  “How does Bubbles feel about Slim Jims?”

  Daisy closed whatever massive tome she’d been reading and shoved it in her handbag. “Who’s that?”

  Trevor grabbed one from the shelf and whipped it toward her. “It’s a long… salty… meat thing.”

  She caught the package between her palms. “Sounds delicious. Do you mind?”

  Why, not at all. He’d love to give her a—Trevor tore his gaze away. No matter what else he managed to accomplish today, he had to get his mind out of the gutter.

  “Will he stay here if I let him out of his cage while we’re gone? He won’t pop off to Bali or anything?”

  “Bubbles is a good boy. He doesn’t go anywhere unless requested. And what do you mean, ‘we’? Am I going to school with you now?”