Beguiled

by Maureen Child

“Um, Aunt Maggie?” Eileen’s voice was quiet, hesitant. “Jasic—he said I could call him that—knows lots of stuff about Great-Gran and Otherworld, and he said he could help Mom and me get used to things over there, since we’ll probably be there a lot now that Quinn wants Mom to stay there until she has the baby and all and—”

  Maggie took an instinctive breath, as always impressed with just how many thoughts Eileen could cram into one sentence.

  “I’m not moving to Otherworld,” Nora said, easing away from Jasic to face Maggie. “Quinn can’t force me to, can he? I mean, you’re his Queen and everything. . . .”

  “Force? Quinn? Otherworld?” Maggie felt as though she’d been dropped into a conversation that had been going on for hours. Nothing was making sense.

  Jasic chuckled and Maggie scowled. She’d been working all day, had come home to get sideswiped by a grandfather she’d never known and now Quinn wanted to kidnap Nora to Otherworld? Again?

  Just a couple of weeks ago, Quinn Terhune, Fae Warrior, had swept Nora off to Otherworld—at Culhane’s orders—to force Maggie to fight and defeat Queen Mab. Weeks had gone by in Faery time while only a couple of days had passed here, but the point was, Nora had been Quinn’s prisoner—though she had come back happy and pregnant—and Maggie wasn’t going to allow that to happen again.

  “What’re you taking about?” she asked, despite the headache currently setting up shop behind her right eye.

  Nora jammed her hands at her hips. “Quinn thinks it would be safer for me to be at his place in Faeryland until I have the baby, but I don’t want to go.”

  “So don’t,” Maggie told her, and idly scratched at the drying paint on her forearm. “He can’t make you and if he tries, I’ll stop him.” She wasn’t sure how yet, but being Queen had to have some advantages, right?

  “See?” Jasic cooed, giving Nora a comforting pat. “As I told you. The Queen will not allow your warrior to abduct you.”

  “Good,” Nora said. “That’s good.”

  “Great.” Maggie moved away from all of them, stepping back into the hall. She really needed some space. Both physical and mental. She wasn’t at all sure how she felt about Jasic showing up and she needed some time to think about it. “Now, I’m going to go take a shower and maybe have dinner.”

  “Fine,” Jasic told her, still smiling that wide, I’m-so-wonderful-don’t-you-just-love-me smile. “We’ll be here.”

  Maggie sighed. There wouldn’t be any relaxing after dinner, then. Shifting a look to Bezel, she asked,“What’re we having tonight?”

  Bezel snorted and slid a furious glance at Jasic. “Your Fae grandfather wouldn’t let me cook.”

  “Of course not. Pixie food?” Jasic shuddered. “Surely we can do better than that. I’ll get something at a local restaurant.”

  “Not like I enjoy cooking for a bunch of humans, you know. I’ll be in my tree if you need me.” Bezel shifted in place, disappearing in an insulted huff.

  And Maggie, as much as Bezel annoyed her, was feeling surprisingly protective of the ugly little guy. “Bezel’s a good cook.”

  “He’s a pixie,” her grandFae explained. “We don’t really . . . associate with his kind.” Then he backpedaled, clearly noting the less-than-pleased expression on Maggie’s face. “Of course, there are exceptions,” he said smoothly. “I’m sure Bissel has been very helpful.”

  “Bezel,” Eileen pointed out before Maggie could.

  “Of course. But for now,” Jasic urged, turning Maggie around and giving her a push down the hall, “why don’t you clean up and I’ll take care of my girls tonight?”

  She hadn’t taken two steps out of the room before the chatter rose up again. Jasic’s laughter. Nora’s happy chuckle. Eileen’s excited questions.

  His girls. Funny, Maggie thought as she headed toward the zigzag stairs. He hadn’t cared about his girls until one of them turned up wearing a crown. But whatever, Maggie told herself as she headed up the series of tiny steps that led to her bedroom. She’d figure out what to do about Jasic later.

  Laughter followed her down the hall, niggling at the back of her brain. It seemed that Nora and Eileen had already decided to accept Jasic at face value. But then, they could. They didn’t have to worry about conspiracies and coincidences and rogue Fae and maybe a grandFae who wasn’t what he claimed to be.

  They weren’t the Queen.

  Chapter Five

  Culhane gathered his most trusted warriors for a meeting within the walls of the palace.

  He looked at the five, sliding his gaze from one familiar, steely face to the next. McCulloch, Quinn, Riley, Muldoon and O’Hara. These warriors had been with him for eons and had fought at his side in innumerable battles. Though all of the Fae Warriors were his brothers in arms, these few he would trust with his life. With Maggie’s life.

  And so he was.

  “The Dullahan are indeed riding again,” he said, remembering the full report McCulloch had delivered only hours ago. His insides fisted, not with fear, but determination. The rogue Fae—even now planning an assault on the walls of their frozen prison, and from there an escape to the mortal world—could not be allowed to succeed.

  “And we stand here when we should be fighting?” Muldoon demanded, looking at his fellow warriors, eager to be off.

  “We meet here first,” Culhane told him shortly. “To decide the best way to proceed.”

  “What says the Queen?” O’Hara spoke up, bracing his fists at his hips and tossing his long black hair back from his face.

  “The Queen doesn’t know about this.”

  Quinn cleared his throat uneasily, but Culhane watched the faces of the other men. Though it didn’t matter what they thought of his decision, he would rather have their agreement before they faced the Dullahan. And though he knew Quinn felt that Maggie should be told—probably because he was in love with Maggie’s sister and dreaded the drama once this truth was known, he also knew Quinn would support him.

  Culhane wasn’t going to involve Maggie in this until it was absolutely necessary. She already dreaded the responsibilities of the throne. To throw an uprising at her now would only undermine his efforts to bring her full-time into Otherworld. He had to manage that soon. Since the night he’d joined her in her dreams, he’d been walking the ragged edge of control. He needed her with him. Needed her to decide to become what they both knew she was destined for.

  So as her chief warrior, he would stop this insurrection before it could gain strength and take care of the Queen’s business. As he’d been doing for centuries for Mab. He knew what he was about—and hadn’t this been his plan from the beginning? Get Maggie on the throne and rule at her side? Ease her into ruling by showing her how it was to be done?

  Certainly, once she found out about this, she would thank him for his diligence.

  “Maggie is in the human world, with worries of her own,” he told his men. “There’s no need to trouble her with this. The Dullahan are still trapped in Casia and we will remove the threat before they escape. Put it down completely. Then I will inform her of what we’ve done.”

  Muldoon shifted uneasily. “You have my allegiance, Culhane, as always. But she is the Queen. We serve at her command.”

  “Is he not the Chieftain here?” Quinn spoke up, anger flashing in his eyes and vibrating in every inch of his large frame. “Do we sit back and ask the females what we are to do when our duty lies stretched out before us so that even a blind man could choose his path?”

  “She is Queen,” O’Hara countered in a calm, deliberate voice.

  “She is not here,” Riley pointed out companionably.

  “I do this not to strip Maggie of power,” Culhane told them all, walking a small, tight circle around them, looking at each of them in turn, “but to show her she has our loyalty. That we stand at her back, ready to defend—even when she cannot be here.”

  There were mutterings, but then one of them nodded and soon enough, the others joined. Quinn looked ready for a fight;
the warrior fairly bristled with impatience. Clearly, he wished to work out his frustrations with his woman on the battlefield. Culhane knew the others would fight as well. They would stand with him, do as he ordered and quell this uprising before it reached the walls of Otherworld and beyond.

  The Dullahan would be broken and resigned once again to remain in Casia, their cold, frozen prison. Even if Culhane had to fight each of the damn things himself.

  “Now, who fights with me?” He asked the question in a low, controlled voice that rumbled through the crystalline halls of the palace like a challenge.

  As one, the five Fae Warriors slapped one hand to the hilts of their swords.

  “We do,” they said together, and Culhane nodded.

  “Then we go now.” He shifted, knowing his friends, his brothers, would rematerialize right beside him.

  The worst thing about your birthday being December 26? Maggie sighed. It wasn’t the whole Merry Christmas- Happy Birthday-present thing. It was having to go to the DMV in December.

  The Department of Motor Vehicles was a trip into the seventh level of hell anytime. But in December, people were crabbier than usual, less patient, more harried and in no way happy to be there.

  “Deck the halls with thoughts of suicide,” Maggie sung just under her breath as she shuffled forward another half inch.

  It wasn’t as if she had all kinds of extra time to devote to this place. And she hadn’t arrived in a good mood, either. Since the night before, when Jasic had appeared in their lives, it had seemed as if her life was unraveling even more than usual. She checked her wristwatch. Already she’d been in line for two hours and she felt as if her feet had become rooted to the dirty, scarred linoleum.

  Hundreds of people muttered and grumbled in long lines that snaked and wandered through the building until their constant, low-voiced complaints sounded like white noise. Probably for the best, she told herself, since that rumble of sound drowned out the Muzak version of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” One more Christmas carol in this place and Maggie was liable to—well, she couldn’t think of anything dire enough—but it would probably be pretty damn impressive.

  A baby cried, an old man coughed so hard Maggie was sure he was hacking up a lung and from somewhere behind her, a woman sneezed like a million times in a row. Goodie. If she ever got out of here, she’d probably leave with the plague. She was going to have to take a bath in her antibacterial lotion just to scrub off all the cooties.

  Plus, she thought with yet another glance at her watch, she was hungry. Crabby and hungry and her feet hurt. Not a good combination.

  She huffed out a breath and let her gaze slide around the building. There were plastic holly garlands hanging from the ceiling and, sitting on a counter, an artificial, three-foot-tall, white Christmas tree with half of its lights burned out. A couple of the clerks wore sad, limp, Santa hats, and the scent of burned coffee and too many people lay over the room like a thick fog.

  Maggie was thrilled to be standing in line to renew her driver’s license, because what better place to spend an afternoon? With such an exciting slice of humanity? Yes, she could have taken care of this by mail if she had remembered to send in the damn paperwork. But between becoming Queen of the Faeries and having to defend herself against demons every time she turned around, paperwork sort of got pushed to the side.

  “Crap,” the woman behind her muttered as she gave Maggie a solid-enough nudge to send her stumbling into the guy in front of her.

  “Sorry, sorry,” Maggie said when the big guy glanced at her with a scowl; then she turned around to look at the woman who was really crowding into Maggie’s personal bubble. At first glance, the woman was fiftyish with straggly gray hair, hard blue eyes and crumbs on her T-shirt. At second glance, she was some kind of demon. The flash of red in those bored eyes gave it away.

  “Big deal,” she said with a sniff. “The Queen. You don’t look so tough.”

  “Oh, fabulous,” Maggie muttered. Even here? In line at the DMV? “Just what I needed to make this day complete.”

  “Yeah, I’m not real happy about being this close to you, either,” the woman snapped. “I’ve got a blister and my back hurts and I’ve been in this damn line so long, I’m about ready to beg you to blow some dust on me and finish me off.”

  All it took for Maggie to kill a demon was concentrating hard enough to focus the Fae dust that was now a part of her into a steady stream to blow at whatever demon was threatening her at the time. A little Fae dust and boom! Demon explodes, dust everywhere. “Hmmm . . .”

  The woman’s eyes went wide. “Never mind,” she blurted just before she sprinted out of line, apparently rethinking that last complaint.

  Maggie watched her go and knew that no one else there would see the woman for what she was. People saw exactly what the Fae wanted them to see, which was creepy when you thought about it, because anything could be sneaking up on you and you wouldn’t have a clue. Why, if the rogue Fae that Culhane was always warning her about actually took it into their heads to invade this world, the humans wouldn’t have a clue what was happening. And the enemy wouldn’t even have to come in swinging swords. Hell, they could sneakily infiltrate and take over from the inside. Glamour themselves as politicians . . . hmmm.

  That thought could explain a lot of what went on in Washington DC.

  A sudden draft of cold settled over Maggie, making her shiver and look around for whatever was causing it. There wasn’t a draft and the air-conditioning wasn’t turned on, so where was the cold air coming from? The temperature continued to drop, though it looked like only she felt it, despite the fact that her upper and lower teeth were clicking against each other so loudly, it sounded as though she had a set of castanets in her mouth.

  But the cold was more than just icy. It was desperate. Lonely. Heartbroken. Her body sagged beneath the weight of the onslaught of despair and that’s when she realized what was going on.

  There had to be a Gray Man nearby.

  God! Had every demon and Fae in Otherworld waited until she was trapped in this endless line to come and make a try for her?

  Maggie’s stomach knotted and fear, thick and sludgy, pumped through her veins. She’d seen a lot of creepy things since discovering this whole new world a few weeks ago. But the Gray Man was way up there on the creep factor ladder.

  A rogue Fae, the Gray Man was mist. Fog. Long, snaking tendrils of icy sensation that sapped away any hope or joy or happiness a person had, eating away at their souls like acid dripped onto bone. They reveled in the despair they caused and sucked whatever light they could from their victims before leaving them empty husks. Soulless humans who would never again smile or feel or love.

  Shivering, Maggie scrubbed her hands up and down her arms and slid her gaze around the milling people. He was watching her and when she spotted him, he smiled.

  To anyone else, he looked like an elderly bookworm. A round, bald head, wire-rimmed glasses and an ill-fitting suit with a lopsided bow tie. His glamour reeked of innocence, vulnerability. Which no doubt helped him in trapping prey.

  The line inched forward again. Maggie had only five people in front of her now. She should be at the counter by March.

  “What’re you doing here?” she asked, glaring at the Gray Man in disguise.

  “Came to see you,” he said, and when he spoke, the temperature dropped again. Damn it.

  She couldn’t exactly blow Fae dust on him to kill him. He was Fae. She could have used the nifty trick of shooting lightning bolts out of her fingertips, but that would probably be noticed here at the Department of Motor Hell. So instead, she glared at him, gave him her best, I-am-Queen-so-back-the-hell-off stare and said, “Go away. Can’t you see I’m busy?”

  “I know you killed one of us,” he said in a whisper of sound.

  Yeah, she had. A couple of weeks ago. Down by the lighthouse, and it hadn’t been easy. But she’d done it, with those lightning bolts that she really wished she could let loose right a
bout now.

  Maggie leaned over and said in a hushed tone, “He came after me and if you don’t get lost, I’ll give you the same right here.”

  “We’re going to kill you,” he said, and finally, the guy in front of Maggie reacted. He jerked a look at the Gray Man, looked like he might bolt, then changed his mind, unwilling to give up his place in line. She so understood.

  “You know what,” Maggie said with a sigh, suddenly tired of all the nuttiness surrounding her. “If you’re gonna kill me, just do it already. Anything’s gotta be better than spending the rest of my freaking life in line.”

  “Step away from the Queen.” A new voice. Commanding. And completely female.

  “What?” Maggie looked to her left. A tall woman in jeans and a black sweater walked up. She had a hard look in her silver eyes and her waist-length brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail from her sharp, elegant face. Fae. Those silver eyes were a dead giveaway, even if the woman hadn’t been tall and gorgeous.

  “Hey,” the Gray Man protested with a glare, “I didn’t do anything to her. Though I could. I’m just standing here.”

  “Stand somewhere else,” the woman said, and waited until the bookish looking little Fae backed away and wandered off somewhere.

  Poor bastard would now have to go to the end of the meandering line and probably wouldn’t get to the counter before summer.

  “Thanks,” she said to the Fae. “But what’re you doing here?”

  “Majesty,” the woman said, with a bow of her head.

  “Cut that out, okay?” Maggie hissed the order, hoping no one else had heard the whole majesty thing.

  The Fae female frowned, then glanced around at the people crowding the old building. “You should not be unprotected. Where is your warrior?”

  Apparently, gossip was alive and well in Otherworld as much as it was here. There was no doubt in Maggie’s mind that the woman was referring to Culhane. But talking about him as if he were a toy poodle on a leash was so out-there, Maggie almost laughed. If Culhane were to be a pet, he’d be more like a Rottweiler.