Luc smiled lazily in return. “No, I don’t suppose I do. Remind me to thank you later, brahtok.”
“Excuse me,” Corinne snapped, looking from one self-satisfied male face to the other, “but I’m sitting right here, and I’m not brain-dead. Do you think you could refrain from talking about me as if I were an object? At least while I’m in the room to hear you?”
Luc brushed his lips against her temple, and she could feel his suppressed laughter. “Maybe. It’ll be tough, but I’ll make the effort.”
A strange squeaking noise made them both turn to look at Reggie. She sat in Dmitri’s lap, struggling to get to her feet, but he held her easily with his arms wrapped around her waist.
“That’s it!” Reggie cried, grabbing her husband’s wrists and attempting to pull his hands off her. “I want to know what you’ve done to Corinne! Have you cast some sort of weird Fae love spell on her? Have you?”
Dmitri tried to hush her, but he was having trouble speaking over his laughter. Reggie ignored him.
“What makes you think I had to use magic to make her love me?” Luc asked. “I think I may be insulted.”
“Oh, no, you’ll know when you’ve been insulted,” Missy growled from the other side of the room, “because I’m about to insult you big time. What kind of dirty, rotten, manipulative, rat-faced bastard plays with someone’s emotions like that? You ought to be ashamed of yourself! Graham, let me go! I want to hit him. Hard.”
Corinne groaned and tried to squirm out from under Luc’s arm, but he was having none of it. “Would you all stop it? You, too, Mr. Grabby Hands.” She glared at Luc before turning back to her primary targets. “And you, my supposed friends who went and got involved with figments of the collective human imagination long before I ever met the guy you want to punish, who the hell do you think you are? If I want to fall in love with a three-toed tree sloth, I’d like to see you try to stop me.”
Breathing hard, she jerked back and felt her eyes widen. Had she just shouted that she was in love with Luc? Had she?
“We don’t care who you fall in love with,” Missy said. “Though the tree sloth thing might take some getting used to. But we do care when you have a spell cast on you by some unscrupulous Fae Lothario.”
“For your information, there is no magic involved here,” she retorted. “Luc couldn’t use magic to make me love him if he tried. He’s already told me his illusions don’t work on me. So there.”
She realized that the so theremight come across as a little childish, but when faced with the choice between saying it and sticking her tongue out, she went with the verbal jab and patted herself on the back for her restraint.
She also braced herself for another volley of arguments, but it never came. Instead, every eye in the room turned to stare at her and Luc, and every jaw—except Fergus’s—dropped to the floor. Her friends were dumbstruck, and Corinne had no idea what was wrong with them. She looked from face to face, reading in each the exact same expression of stunned disbelief. Finally, she crossed her arms over her chest and gave a distinct harrumph.
“What?” she demanded.
Luc froze and wondered what the best way was to convey to everyone in the room that the first person to inform Corinne she was his heartmate would die a slow, gruesome, and painful death at his hands. Did that need to be in writing?
“Corinne, are you serious? Do you understand what you just said?”
Missy was the first to recover from the initial shock of Corinne’s revelation, and Luc fought back a wave of regret. He hated to harm Graham’s unborn cub, but figured his friend would see the necessity. He braced himself to leap off the sofa and tackle her.
“If that’s true, then you’re Luc’s—”
“Missy, honey,” Graham cut in, “I don’t think it’s polite to question Corinne about her feelings for Luc. That’s between the two of them.”
“But, Graham, you heard what she said,” Reggie protested. “And she clearly has no idea of the significance—”
“Whether or not this is true, it is none of your business, dushka.” Dmitri’s voice was stern but loving. “It is not your place to have this discussion with Corinne.”
Luc sent his friends grateful looks, but apparently his heartmate actually wanted him to have to kill her friends.
“No, let them talk,” she said, arms crossed over her chest, her kissable mouth turned down in a scowl. He recognized that expression better than her smile, he mused. “My friends can say anything they want to me. I can tell them myself that they’re full of crap.”
“But Corinne, you don’t understand about Luc,” Reggie said. “He’s not like other men. He’s not like humans.”
“Oh, and you’re one to talk, Mrs. Fang.” Corinne cast an apologetic look at Dmitri, who just grinned. “You’re the one who started all of this. We all led perfectly normal lives until you decided to bump uglies with a guy on a liquid diet.”
“Rinne, he’s clouded your mind!”
Corinne laughed, even though Luc didn’t think she sounded all that amused. “Am I the only one who finds this scene strangely familiar, only with different cast members in the leading roles? You gonna wave a cross at me, Reg? Or maybe some—”
She paused, frowning, and looked at Luc. “What do you use against Fae, anyway? I know there was something in all those stories.”
“Cold iron,” he murmured, trying not to laugh.
“Right.” She turned back to Reggie. “Maybe some cold iron then. Don’t be such a hypocrite.”
“Reggie is not trying to be a hypocrite, and neither am I,” Missy said in her I’m-the-moderator-here voice. “We’re just concerned about you.”
Luc broke in at that point. He just couldn’t take the chance of this going on any longer. “You have no need to be concerned. I will do everything in my power to take care of Corinne. You have my word.”
His loving heartmate thumped him across the chest. “What about if I want to take care of you? I’m not some helpless porcelain doll, you know.”
Luc winced and rubbed the spot where her fist had landed. “Yes, I know. It was a figure of speech. Regina, Melissa, I swear to you, I will tell Corinne everything, and I will allow her just as many choices as I can. You have my word on it. But now isn’t the time. We need to find Seoc and protect the Faerie door before it’s too late.”
He watched while the two women looked at him, at Corinne, at their husbands, and back at him.
“All right,” Reggie said, without sounding all that pleased about it. “We’ll give you until Seoc is back in Fae hands, but not a minute more. And we expect you to be completely honest, and to respect her wishes. Is that clear?”
Luc looked at the petite, fledgling vampire and the delicate human Luna and almost laughed, but then he looked at the eight-hundred-year-old vampire and the alpha Lupine who were their mates, and nodded respectfully. “It’s clear. And again, you have my word on it.”
He heard Corinne snarl next to him and looked down into her irritated eyes. He had the nearly overwhelming urge to kiss the tip of her wrinkled nose, but figured unless he wanted to risk losing his tongue, he’d better refrain.
“I have no idea what’s going on here,” she growled, “but I’m pretty damned sure it’s pissing me off.”
He couldn’t help grinning. “I’ll explain everything later, but right now we have work to do.”
FOURTEEN
Once everyone stopped trying to run Corinne’s love life for her, they were actually able to get to the reason they had all met up at Rafe’s house—to develop a plan for trapping Seoc and getting him safely back to Faerie.
“I take it jumping out of the woods or wherever with a big net isn’t going to cut it, huh?” Missy’s mouth twisted into a grimace as she rubbed her belly and sipped from the champagne glass full of milk that Rafe had handed her.
“Not exactly,” Luc said. “Seoc is intelligent enough to be hard to catch at the best of times, but he knows that if he’s caught this time, t
he Queen is not going to be nearly so lenient as in the past.”
“Yeah. Because it’s better to catch him now, when he’s trying to end the world, than it would have been, oh, say, the last billion times he’s caused trouble and gotten no more than a slap on the wrist.” Corinne ignored Luc’s horrified expression. “Either way, though, I doubt the net is going to be all that effective. Because I’m guessing even these guys don’t have, like, a magic net.”
“No magic nets.” Rafe actually let her down politely, which was more than she could say for Fergus’s dismissive snort. “But I believe we make up for in numbers what we would otherwise lack in…nets.”
Luc nodded. “As long as I can count on you all for support, I’m not worried. The trick is going to be finding the door and getting to it before he does.” He looked hopefully at Rafe and Dmitri. “I don’t suppose that particular bit of intelligence is something passed down from Council head to Council head?”
“I wish that it were, brahtok,but if any of the others had such knowledge, they never passed it on to me.” Dmitri shrugged. “I doubt anyone did know, however. Mab is not the sort who would trust such knowledge to an outsider.”
“Yeah,” Luc said. “The problem is that she didn’t trust it to any insiders, either.”
“Um, wasn’t that the question we were going to ask the Queen?” Corinne interrupted. She only saw four male faces grimace, because she didn’t bother looking at Fergus.
“I was hoping we wouldn’t have to,” Luc said with a sigh. “I have a feeling she’s going to be a little…cranky.”
“Why? Because she didn’t bother to provide you with vital information before you came here? Or because it’s been twenty-four whole hours and you haven’t managed to accomplish your mission?”
Luc just looked at her. “No. Because she’s the Queen.”
“It might be better if you waited outside.”
Corinne looked at Luc as if he’d lost his mind and reached past him for the doorknob to Rafe’s library. The host had offered to let them use the private space for their talk with the Faerie Queen. “Thanks, but I want to see this.”
He grabbed her hand. “No, really,” he repeated, slowly and deliberately. “It would be better.”
“I don’t particularly care. I’m not planning to interfere, but I want to hear this conversation. Are you telling me I can’t come with you?”
“Would it do any good if I did?”
“Not a bloody bit.”
“And that’s why I would never try to tell you anything of the sort. But I am trying to let you know it might be better—”
He looked at her expression, sighed, and opened the library door. “Fine. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’ll sign a waiver.”
“If only I believed that.”
She ignored him and strode into the library ahead of him, waiting while he closed and locked the door. She expected to see him batten down the hatches and don Kevlar, with the way he’d been acting. “So what do we have to do?”
His eyebrows shot up and she thought he turned a little paler. “We don’t have to do anything. I will take care of everything. You will sit quietly and try not to look directly at the Queen.”
She scoffed. “Why? Will the sight of her turn me to stone, or drive me mad, or something?”
“No!” He looked appalled. “I just don’t want you to make her mad.”
“Hey!”
He ignored her protest, took her by the shoulders, and pushed her down into a leather club chair, placing her hands on the arms and warning her sternly to keep them there. She considered boxing his ears instead, but he refused to let go.
“Now,” he said, putting his face right up to hers and looking at her the way her third-grade teacher, Sister Mary Agnes, had when Corinne had gotten into trouble. “This is going to be a delicate sort of situation. Since you’re not familiar with the protocols of the Faerie court, or how the Queen expects to be addressed, I will do all of the talking. Allof the talking. Understand?”
She glared at him. Seething.
“You will sit very still, keep your eyes on the floor or the fireplace mantel, and stay absolutely silent. Understand?”
She bared her teeth at him. If they hadn’t been clenched so tightly, she might have sunk them into something vital. Like his jugular. And here she thought only folks like Graham got the urge to rip out throats with their teeth. That was before she met Luc.
“Oh, I understand,” she said, very, very softly. “I understand that you’d better be very careful not to turn your back on me anytime soon, Lucifer. God knows you obviously can’t trust me to control myself.”
“Right.” He nodded. “So long as we understand each other.”
She watched through narrowed eyes and a strange red fog while he straightened up and took two steps away from her chair, facing the large cabinet against the wall. Opening the door, he revealed an elaborate panel of stained glass carefully mounted in a wooden frame.
Corinne wasn’t precisely sure what she had expected to see, but she knew this wasn’t it. Maybe she’d been prepared for him to recite a few lines of bad poetry, or chalk arcane symbols on the floor, or sacrifice a chicken, or something. Hell, even a little chanting and a stick or two of incense would have been nice, but somehow she’d been expecting magic to look a little bit more…well…magical.
This way, all she got to see was Luc make a weird gesture with his right hand before the panes of brightly colored glass began to shine and turn liquid, rippling like the surface of a pond. Then all at once the picture in the glass disappeared and Corinne found herself looking at the face of the most beautiful woman she had ever seen.
Eyes the deep, stormy green of a cold-water ocean seemed to glow in a face that had the complexion of a bowl of vanilla cream. Her sharp, angular, and yet wholly feminine bone structure could make an angel jealous. Her brows were thin, dark, and arching, and her eyelashes were long and thick. Her red-gold hair, worn long and loose, shone like a halo around her. Corinne felt her jaw drop and wondered if there weren’t another reason why Luc had told her not to look directly at the Queen.
When she spoke, the Queen’s voice was musical and her words rang from her mouth like the chiming of a bell. “Hello, my Lucifer. I did not expect to have you call me this eve. Have you word of my nephew?”
Corinne watched as the man who had refused to concede anything to her without a fight bowed neatly from the waist and addressed the vision with deferential courtesy.
“My Queen, I have discovered some things about Seoc, but I’m afraid it is not heartening news.”
“Yes, well, I expected as much.”
The Queen’s airy, dismissive tone made Corinne’s eyes widen and made Luc straighten his already military posture. “You expected it, my Queen?”
Mab nodded. “Why, yes. I assumed that if Seoc were really ignoring my summons, he must be doing something worth angering me. So naturally, I assumed he was attempting to open the door.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
Even after only knowing him for a day, Corinne could tell that this slow, deep, controlled tone of voice meant Luc was about one step from committing a violent act. She watched curiously, wondering if perhaps it was a really good thing that he was only speaking to a vision of the Queen, and not in her physical presence. She assumed that the Fae still frowned on regicide.
“You are my finest warrior. I assumed you would find out soon enough, my Lucifer, as I see you have.” The Queen seemed to turn her head and her lips curved in a bewitching smile. “Ah. I see you have indeed found something to please you, my Lucifer. As I said you would.”
“Me?”
Corinne heard the squeak, but it took a few seconds to realize it had come from her own lips. She honestly hadn’t meant to speak, but the Queen’s comment had caught her off guard.
“Corinne…” Luc’s voice was a growl, and she shot him an apologetic look.
“D
o not scold her, my Lucifer. I was indeed speaking of her, and I would speak to her now. I had hoped you would bring her to me.”
Oookay. Corinne could practically hear the theme from the Twilight Zoneplaying in the background, but she sat up straighter in her chair and eyed the Queen warily.
“Tell me, child, what is your name?”
“Corinne. D’Alessandro.”
“Ah. Lovely.” The Queen smiled. “And what do you think of my Lucifer, young Corinne?”
Young Corinne? For Pete’s sake, she hadn’t been referred to that way since this past Thanksgiving, when her great-aunt Corinne had died and she had finally moved up to the “big people’s table” for dinner. She saw Luc watching her, a look of horrified panic on his face, and kept her thoughts to herself. “I think he’s…very dedicated.”
“Yes, he is. And though he dedicates himself to few things, he is unswervingly loyal to them.”
Not knowing what else to do, Corinne gave a murmur of agreement.
“But what I really wanted to know, Corinne, is what you think of Lucifer as a heartmate.”
“A what?” She heard Luc’s groan even over her question.
“A heartmate. Surely you’ve given some thought as to how well he suits you? Not that you can refuse to have him, of course, but I am curious to know how a human would feel to be bound so to one of our kind.”
“Bound? How he suitsme? Can’t refuse him?” Her voice rose an octave with each question. She was about to leap out of her chair and issue a very blunt demand that the Queen of Faerie explain just what the hell she was talking about when Luc stepped forward and put a hand on her shoulder to press her down into her chair. She wanted to know what the hell was going on, damn it.
“My Queen,” he began, his voice carefully controlled and only a tiny bit more forceful than usual, “I am sure Corinne is honored by your attention, but I am afraid that Seoc’s actions leave us short on time. We need your help if we’re going to bring him back soon and safely.”
Not Your Ordinary Faerie Tale Page 18