Beguiled

by Maureen Child

  Culhane? Quinn? McCulloch?

  Those three? Poodles?

  She smiled. “Talk all you want, demon boy. But between me and my poodles, you guys are toast.”

  Off to one side, Claire was murmuring softly, her hands waving like graceful white flags before her. She stared straight ahead as if unaware of the fight going on in front of her. Suddenly though, the air electrified and Maggie felt a charge of energy erupt just below the surface of her skin.

  “You need a witch to fight me?” He sneered the insult.

  “Nope,” Maggie told him, and flew at him. Actually flew.

  She’d been getting better in that area for days, practicing in the backyard at night when no neighbor would be likely to see her. All it took was concentrating the floaty thing into actual movement and voilà. Flying.

  His eyes went wide, his mouth dropped open and when Maggie hit him dead square in the chest and knocked him over onto his back, he just lay there like a landed trout. She straddled him, pinning his arms beneath her knees.

  He bucked and writhed, trying to twist free, but Maggie wasn’t about to let him loose; then she drew on her power, gathered it into a single force inside her and blew a steady stream of sparkling, gold Faery dust right into his eyes.

  He let out one hideous, earsplitting shriek of pain; then he poofed. Just exploded into dust and Maggie dropped to the straw-covered dirt.

  Heart pounding, mouth dry, Maggie sat there for a long minute, simply trying to catch her breath. Fear eased off, relief crowded in and she let her head fall back so she could stare up at a gray, cloud-covered sky. When a rustle of sound caught her attention, she looked up into the face of the tree lot worker’s friend. He appeared to be younger, more clean shaven and yep, flames were flickering in those eyes, too.

  Before she could make a move, though, the guy held up both hands and took a scuttling step or two backward, half hiding behind a Scotch pine just for good measure.

  “Hey,” he said, “chill, Your Majesty. Hank was all crazed to be Mr. Queen Killer, not me, ’kay? I’m just doin’ my thing here, spreadin’ holiday cheer, ’kay? I told Hank to back off when you showed up. You know, it’s all live and let live, I say. I got no problems with you, ’kay? All I’m doin’ is trying to sell some trees and make a buck. You good with that?”

  Maggie’s ears were still ringing and the knees of her jeans were soaking wet, not to mention probably torn, and she didn’t care what Hollywood was wearing; holey jeans just looked tacky and now she needed a new pair, which meant more shopping. And the demon was still staring at her, waiting for an answer.

  “Huh?” she asked, shaking her head.

  He talked slower. “No. Kill. Me. ’Kay?”

  “Twenty bucks off any Christmas tree,” Maggie countered.

  He groaned. “Dude. You’re killin’ me here.”

  “No, I’m not,” she told him as she pushed up off her knees and brushed her hands together, getting rid of the clinging demon dust. “That’s the point.”

  He watched that dust blow away in the wind and then nodded. “Twenty bucks off. Right there with ya. Deal. ’Kay?”

  “ ’ Kay.”

  He faded back into the trees then, and Claire walked up to join Maggie. “You lead an interesting life.”

  “A little too interesting sometimes,” Maggie told her, and winced when she looked at her torn jeans; then she glanced at her friend. “I shouldn’t have brought you with me, Claire. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, please.” Claire waved one hand in dismissal, then handed Maggie her latte. “Not like I’ve never seen a demon before.”

  That was the good side of having a friend completely at home with the world of the supernatural and weird.

  “True,” Maggie said, taking a sip before handing the latte back. “And you are a witch.”

  “See?” Claire hooked her arm through Maggie’s. “All’s well that ends with dead demons and bargain Christmas trees.”

  “Good point.”

  “You know, your fighting skills have really improved. Not to mention the whole flying thing.”

  “Thanks.” Maggie stopped to look at a particular tree. At least six feet tall, it was wide and fresh and completely beautiful and with her demon discount, she could totally afford it. Perfect. Smiling, she said, “How about this one?”

  “Looks gorgeous,” Claire agreed, reaching out to check the freshness.

  “So what was that spell you did?”

  “Oh.” She shrugged, leaned in and took a sniff of the tree. Smiling, she said, “That was just a centering incantation, to help you focus.”

  Maggie grinned. “Good idea.”

  “We witches do what we can,” Claire told her. “Now, are we going to get this tree so we can go home and get warm?”

  “That’s a plan.” Maggie turned and shouted, “Demon boy, we found one!”

  “While we wait,” Claire prodded, “why don’t you tell me more about Faery sex?”

  Maggie smiled, stuffed her hands in her coat pockets and said, “Why don’t you just jump McCulloch and find out for yourself?”

  “Mac?” Claire pulled her head back, stared at Maggie and tried to look appalled. “That arrogant, pushy, argumentative, know-it-all warrior beast? Are you insane?”

  “A hottie, isn’t he?”

  Claire huffed out a breath. “Aye, if you like men who are so big they blot out the bloody sky. If you’ve no care about a man thinking you’re his bleeding property because you’ve given him a smile or two and one time he kissed you until you were swaying in the dusk like a man who’d spent too long over a bottle of good, single malt scotch. Or if you—”

  Maggie grinned. “I notice your Scots accent gets a little thicker when you talk about Mac. Have you noticed that?”

  “I’ve not and neither have you,” Claire snapped, then stopped, listened to herself and muttered a curse. “You’re entirely too know-it-all yourself sometimes, Maggie.”

  “Queen. Remember?”

  “Aye, I do at that,” Claire murmured. “So just tell me this. The Fae sex. Is it really worth putting up with those warriors?”

  Maggie’s smile widened even further. “Aye, my friend. Give that one a big aye.”

  “You call that fighting?” Bezel snorted, shook his head and brushed dirt from the front of his green velvet suit. “My wife, Fontana, could clean your clock, Majesty.”

  Right about then, Maggie thought, her lazy dog, Sheba, could have cleaned her clock. She was exhausted. Sex with Culhane could wear a girl out. Then there was the fight that morning with the Christmas tree demon. Then there was decorating the tree, which still wasn’t finished because Nora kept rearranging everything. Then Bezel and Claire had wanted to plan battle strategies. Now, several hours later, Maggie was stretched out in the backyard, wheezing for air.

  Why was it, she wondered, that the pixie and the witch could fight with each other, then team up against her? Quinn just had to get his two cents in, too, and then Eileen was hovering nearby as if she sensed things were getting stickier. And all in all, the little Donovan house was starting to feel like a cramped hotel.

  But she was grateful for the company. The less she was alone right now, the safer she felt.

  “You gonna lie there all day like a Scythian slug or you gonna get up and fight some more?”

  Scythian slug? Okay, there was one creature she was in no hurry to run into.

  “Twenty-seven percent of women in their thirties die of unexpected heart attacks after excessive activity,” Eileen pointed out from her perch on Bezel’s tree house.

  “Where do you get that stuff?” Bezel shot the girl an irritated frown. “Never mind. Don’t want to know.” He looked back at Maggie. “Pay no attention to the kid. You’re not a pitiful human anymore. You’re a pitiful Fae. Better stamina. Not as good as a pixie’s, but what is?”

  “You know,” Maggie said from flat on her back in the dirt and grass, “I’m the Queen now. I shouldn’t have to be doing all this jumping
and spinning and stabbing.” She lifted her head and pinned her little torturer with a hard glare. “Don’t I have minions for this?”

  He laughed, that raspy, sandpaper-on-steel sound. “Minions? Right. Let me just bend over, Your Queenli ness, and you can kiss my pixie ass.”

  “You’re to train her, you miserable pile of trollshit,” a deep voice thundered from the back porch. “You’ve no call to be insulting the Queen.”

  Bezel’s eyes rolled up in his head. He gave McCulloch the same amount of respect he did Culhane and Quinn. Which was none.

  Maggie closed her eyes briefly and tried to ignore the muttered sounds of Mac and Claire bickering. Again. If Claire would just take Maggie’s advice and jump the warrior’s bones already, things would quiet down around there.

  Romance, it seemed, was blossoming. In the middle of yet another threat from Mab, there were hearts and flowers all over the damn place. Nora and Quinn. Mac and Claire. Maggie and Culhane—maybe.

  Yes, they’d had great sex. And she hoped to do it again, really soon. But that wasn’t romance. And she was in love with him, but that didn’t mean he loved her, because if he did, he sure wasn’t bothering to tell her, and even if he did, she wasn’t sure she could believe him anyway and . . . Oh God. She was starting to ramble just like Eileen. Maggie needed a vacation.

  She dropped her head back to the ground and stared up at the cloud-swept sky. “She’s coming, isn’t she?”

  “Mab?” Bezel walked closer, his wide, bare feet scuffing on the lawn that needed mowing. “Yeah, she is.”

  A wind blew in off the nearby ocean and gave Maggie a chill. At least, she hoped the wind was the cause and not some damn foreboding or other.

  “I’m going to need help to beat her this time,” Maggie told him. “Last time, I pretty much caught her by surprise.”

  “Hell, you took her. That’s all that counts.”

  Maggie squinted at him. With the sun behind him, Bezel’s hair looked as if it were on fire and his ugly little face was in shadow. “Yeah, I did. This time, though . . .”

  “This time,” Bezel told her, “I brought you an edge.”

  “Huh?”

  “Will someone open this gate?” A deep voice shouted from the other side of the backyard fence.

  Nora went to open it and Maggie sat up, ready to defend if she had to. But she needn’t have bothered. Quinn shifted from wherever he had been and appeared directly in front of Nora. He opened the gate and barely managed to hide a sneer as Jasic stepped through.

  Maggie’s grandFae stopped dead in the yard, looked around and then fixed her with a hard stare. “Why have you tried to keep me out?”

  “What?”

  “You’ve a spell around the house. I was having so hard a time trying to break through it, I gave up and was forced to knock on your door like a common pixie.”

  “Hey!” Bezel shouted.

  “And why are you lying in the dirt, Maggie?” Jasic smoothed the lapels of his dark blue jacket. “You’re a queen now. You’ve appearances to maintain.”

  “You couldn’t get through the wards?” Claire asked from the back porch.

  “I could have. It was just a bit . . . difficult,” Jasic explained; then his gaze narrowed on her. “Did you raise the spell?”

  “She did,” Mac spoke up, stepping in front of Claire as if ready to defend her.

  But Claire stepped out from behind him to speak for herself. “I did, yes. A protection spell against potential enemies.”

  “Ah.” Jasic nodded and a moment later, beamed an appreciative smile at them all. “A wise decision, no doubt.”

  “Anyway,” Bezel said, drawing Maggie’s attention back to him, “as I was saying, I brought you something that will help you fight Mab.”

  “An army? A bazooka?” Maggie asked hopefully. “An army with bazookas?”

  He sneered at her, his ugly little face sliding into familiar wrinkle patterns. “As if that would help. No. This is better.” He reached into the front of his jacket and pulled out a sword.

  “A sword?” Maggie asked, brushing her hands off and glaring at the pixie. “This is your big help? A sword?”

  “An iron sword,” Bezel said, gazing lovingly at the dark gray blade that seemed to absorb the watery, winter sunlight.

  “Fool pixie!” Jasic’s panicked shout rang out, and he walked a wide berth around Bezel and Maggie as he hurried toward the back porch. “Are you trying to kill her?”

  “Kill me?”

  “Don’t you know it’s iron, you little troll?” Jasic called out.

  “I do, and who asked for your opinion?” Bezel shouted back at him. Looking at Maggie, he added, “This was Culhane’s idea and it’s a damn good one.”

  “Culhane?” That got her attention. Maggie eagerly looked around the yard as if half expecting to see the warrior step out from behind a tree. But of course, he didn’t. “When did you see him?”

  “This morning.” Bezel nodded to McCulloch, looked back at Maggie and said, “He popped in, left this with me and went off again.”

  Well, didn’t she feel special? After what they’d done . . . what he’d done to her last night, he couldn’t even say hello? He didn’t want to see her? Stop in for a quickie? No, he just visits the pixie, drops off a sword and goes back to Otherworld. Well, Maggie thought, guess that told her just how much she mattered.

  “Fool pixie!” Jasic shouted. “Iron is poison to our kind and well you know it!”

  “Poison?”

  “It really is, Aunt Maggie.” Eileen leaned out from her seat in the tree house. “According to my research, the Fae can’t touch iron without getting really sick. Of course, it can’t really kill them, because they’re, you know, immortal, unless you cut off their heads, but they can really wish they were dead, you know?”

  “Jeez,” Bezel said, shooting the girl a withering stare. “Who’s the teacher here?”

  “You? A teacher?” Jasic sneered from safety, just below the porch where McCulloch and Claire stood speaking in hushed tones. “What could you possibly teach my granddaughter that would be worth learning? She’s a queen.”

  Maggie tuned Jasic out. He probably meant well, but the truth was, Bezel had taught her a lot. He’d trained her in using her newly found powers. Helped her focus to straighten out her flying and had even coached her in hand-to-hand combat. Plus, he was now her secret agent. Double-0-Bezel. Not bad for a pixie only three feet tall and two thousand years old.

  “So, if it’s poison, why do you have it?” she asked.

  Bezel’s pale blue eyes locked on hers. “It was Culhane’s idea. He wants you to carry it. Learn to wield it. Says you can use it when you face Mab again. Get in a couple of swipes and the ex-bitch-Queen-of-the-universe will be slowed down. Get sick. Might be enough to give you the edge.” He paused, looked at the long, lethal-looking blade again and mused, “You’re still part human, so it’s not going to affect you like it does us. So use it to get close to Mab. Get really close and lop off her head. Take her out permanently.”

  “Cut off her head?” Maggie’s stomach pitched. Sure, she’d dusted some demons, killed a couple rogue Fae. But could she really cut off someone’s head? Even Mab’s?

  “Don’t get queasy on me now, kid.” His eyes narrowed, his silver eyebrows drawing together, forming a V on his forehead. “It’s brass-ring time, you know? When Mab comes after you this time, she’s not gonna be pussyfootin’ around. She’s coming to kill you. So you’d better be ready to kill her right back.”

  “Right.” Maggie stood up, took the sword from Bezel and hefted it, getting used to the feel of it in her hand. The sterling-silver hilt fit her palm as if it had been made for her. The blade was long, curved and wicked looking.

  Maggie’s gaze locked on its razor edge and let the hard, unshakeable truth settle inside her. Another fight was coming. And this one was likely to make her last scuffle with Mab look like a picnic in comparison. So she’d better do just what her pixie had said. Get read
y.

  “Okay,” she murmured, shifting a hard look at Bezel. “Show me how to use this thing.”

  “Eileen!”

  A whisper of a voice calling her name had Eileen turning around to look into the darkened interior of Bezel’s tree house. She’d been inside it lots of times and she knew that the house only looked tiny on the outside.

  Inside, it was huge, with fireplaces and comfy furniture and staircases to a second story that no way would anyone see from the outside. Bezel had built it with magic when his wife, Fontana, told him if he liked spending so much time with humans, he could just stay here—which Eileen totally hoped he would. Stay, that is. Because he was fun and didn’t treat her like a little kid, which everyone else in the whole world did, no matter that she was practically a teenager.

  “Eileen!”

  The whisper came again and she chewed at her bottom lip. Who could be in there? Everyone but Culhane was in the yard. Maybe it was Mab, she thought with a stab of fear so sharp she sucked in a gulp of air and it got caught in her lungs. No, not Mab, she assured herself. Claire’s spell kept out anyone who meant harm, so it couldn’t be the former queen.

  Eileen’s brain was moving so fast, all of these thoughts took only a second or two. Quickly, she shifted another look at the ground below the tree house.

  Aunt Maggie was swinging the sword, looking pretty cool. Mac and Claire were still talking on the porch, Jasic standing unnoticed beneath them, and Eileen’s mom was headed for the kitchen, probably going to make more cookies. Quinn was watching Bezel and Maggie, and Sheba was asleep under the tree.

  So who . . .

  “Eileen, it’s me.”

  Fear fell away as she smiled and excited bubbles filled up her tummy. Turning around completely now, she peered into the darkness, trying to see. “How did you get here?”

  “Come inside,” the voice urged. “I’ll show you.”

  With one last look at her family, Eileen grinned, and eagerly crawled through the open door of the tree house and into the shadows.