The hardware store window was moving.
“Damn!” She was moving.
Through the window she watched as Sam’s eyes got as big as dinner plates. Then she grabbed hold of the side of the building, waved at him and shoved herself over to the ladder.
She was not getting her day off to a good start.
Chapter Four
“Gotta get my eyes checked.”
“Jeez!” She wobbled on the ladder and grabbed at the top rung.
Sam was standing just below her, alternately rubbing his eyes and examining the spread of snowmen sliding downhill on shiny red sleds; Christmas trees; and the foot-high letters spelling out HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
He shook his head and muttered, “People don’t float, for chrissakes. Gotta go to the eye doctor. Probably having a stroke. Damn customers.”
Maggie felt a twinge of guilt that was immediately drowned in a sigh of relief that Sam figured he was the one with the problem.
“Good painting. This oughta convince everybody I got the Christmas spirit.”
“Sure, Sam.” Hey, he wanted to believe that holiday decorations made him less of a grumbling jerk? Who was she to tell him different?
“You’re gonna put in more snow, though, right?” He waved one hand at the windows, touched a tree dotted with white paint before Maggie could tell him not to, and left fingerprints behind. “I mean, I want it to look really Christmassy,” he added, rubbing the tips of his fingers together to get rid of the paint. “Nothing says Christmas like snow.”
“Sure, Sam.” Maggie was used to the critique. Every year Sam wanted more and more holiday for his buck. But let her try to raise her price and all thoughts of happy holidays and caroling children went out the window. “More white on the trees. You want wreaths on the door glass, too?”
His dark eyes narrowed on her. “Is that extra?”
She sighed. Father Christmas in person. “No.”
“Then, yeah. Put ’em up. Something really big and splashy. Red ribbons and all that crap.”
“Morning, Sam,” someone called out, and the older man spun around to see a customer darting into his store.
“Gotta go keep an eye on her,” he muttered. “She walked out with a pair of pliers last week. Can’t prove it was her, but I know. You keep going. Lots of snow, now, remember.”
“Right.” Once he was gone Maggie relaxed her grip on the top rung of the ladder. No way had she wanted to risk floating again in front of Sam. Bad enough she’d done some floating in front of Eileen that morning at breakfast. Good times. Naturally, Eileen had jumped all over it.
“You’re still floating,” her niece pointed out.
“Apparently.” And she had the headache to prove it. Why’d she have to be so tall, anyway? No, she was the Amazon in the family, and Nora was the petite one.
“So, are you a Faery now?” Eileen was watching her with interest, and Maggie had skillfully dodged that question.
She only wished she could ignore it entirely.
“Becoming a Faery?” Now she glanced down at her long legs, her paint-spattered jeans and her blue tank top with the words MAGGIE’S MURALS emblazoned across her less-than-petite boobs. “Yeah. That’s me. A delicate little fairy.”
Then she snorted and went back to work.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Culhane glanced at the pixie beside him, then shifted his gaze back to the woman across the street from them. “No, I’m not. That’s her.”
Bezel shook his head, sending his long, silvery hair flying. Here in the shadows of the alley lying between two stores on the main street of Castle Bay, the small, wrinkled-up creature looked even more horrifying than usual. Which was saying something, Culhane told himself. Even for a pixie, Bezel was ugly. His face had more furrows than a farmer’s field, and his eyes were so pale a blue they looked like chips of ice glittering in the dim light.
As the pixie stroked the few straggly hairs on his pointed chin and considered Maggie Donovan with a less-than-approving gaze, Culhane found himself wanting to defend her. He frowned to himself at that notion and kept his silence. He didn’t have to wait long to hear Bezel’s opinion.
“This is trollshit and you know it, Culhane.” The pixie turned his face up, spearing the other male with those cold eyes. “No way is that female able to go up against Mab and win.”
“She will,” he said firmly, and wondered whether he was trying to convince Bezel or himself. Didn’t matter, really. The die was cast. Maggie Donovan would become who she was meant to be. Even if it killed Bezel. “You’re going to train her.”
Bezel’s face wrinkled even further in distaste. “What am I? A miracle worker?”
“And you’re going to do a damned good job of it.”
The pixie snorted and waved one long-fingered hand. “Oh, don’t get your leathers in a bunch. I said I’d do it, didn’t I? Save the mighty-warrior-of-the-Fae attitude, too. Not impressed. I’ve known you too long to be scared by you.”
True. The Fae and pixies were more or less natural enemies, with the roots of that enmity going back to before Otherworld had come about. Each race had wanted to rule, and when the Fae had won that contest, hard feelings were born that carried on to this day. But somehow this small, annoying creature had become a friend. Of sorts. They’d known each other for centuries, and over those years a fragile, unexpected bond had grown between them.
Culhane turned his face into the cold ocean wind that sailed down the alleyway, sending papers skittering across the dirty pavement. The stench of the mortal world was all around him, and as his breath shortened, he thought that even his lungs were loath to take in great gulps of this air.
Yet here he was. He couldn’t be in Otherworld until his plan was completely in motion. He’d done what he could so far, but . . .
Now that the older male had retreated back into his store, Maggie was standing precariously on a stepladder, working again. Going up on her toes, she reached out with her right hand to swipe a paint-laden brush across the glass. Culhane watched her turning a bare surface into a wintry scene and admired the talent behind that hand.
She had depths to her that she didn’t share with others. He sensed it in her. Those depths revealed themselves in her painting, whether she knew it or not. He wondered, too, if she noticed that the silly painted creatures she created were all . . . lonely. Her snowmen were not standing in groups, but alone on hills. Sliding on sleds built for one. Decorating small Christmas trees by themselves.
Nowhere in these images did he find couples, friends, solidarity. They were all singular creatures, and he felt a kinship with the painted faces. He understood the ease of alone. He knew what it was to keep to himself, to stand unaided in a world designed for mates. And he asked himself if Maggie, too, shared that sense of being an outsider, even among those she loved.
“Hah!”
Bezel’s triumphant shout shattered his thoughts, and Culhane turned one unamused eye on him. “What?”
“Culhane the mighty is hungering after a mortal.”
Irritated that the pixie had noticed what Culhane had thought he’d hidden, he muttered, “I hunger only for what she can do for Otherworld.”
“Yeah, tell yourself that if you need to, Fenian. But I know what I see. Makes me wonder what Mab would think of this.”
“Mab won’t find out.”
“You’d better hope not.” The pixie’s gaze shot back to Maggie as her feet began to lift off the top rung of the ladder. “For the love of the goddess . . . would you look at that? Not got the brains of a tree squirrel. She’s going to get caught floating, and then what?”
His harsh statement still ringing in the air, Bezel kicked at an empty soda can, and as it careened down the alley it made a nearly musical clatter.
“She won’t get caught. Look, she’s already stopped it. Her concentration is improving.”
“Damn well better or she won’t be any use to us at all.” Bezel laughed, and the sound was like na
ils scraping against iron. “Can’t you see it? She challenges Mab, the queen strikes out and your idiot painter floats herself at her. Oh, that’ll be great. I can see the victory parade now.”
“It’s your job to train her, so if she fails, it’ll be your head.”
Bezel swallowed hard and lifted one hand to his throat, as if checking that his head was still attached to his scrawny body. Satisfied, he bared a mouthful of teeth at Culhane, and the warrior wasn’t sure whether it was a threat or an attempt at a smile. Either way, he didn’t much care for it.
“I’ll train her,” the pixie said. “But I can’t guarantee she’ll listen. You know what dealing with mortals is like. Even Faeries are flummoxed by them.”
Culhane frowned. “I am not.”
Bezel rocked back and forth on his long, wide feet. “Yeah, you ought to try telling that to somebody who can’t see you standing there with your tongue hanging out while you watch the part-Fae.”
Culhane gave the little man a cold, hard stare. “If you value your tongue, you might want to try to restrain it.”
“For the love of pixie children, why don’t you just bed the female, get it out of your system and then worry about training her?”
“She’s not here for my pleasure,” Culhane warned, crouching until his gaze speared into the pixie’s so the little man wouldn’t make the mistake of not listening. “She’s here for Otherworld. She’s too important to us to risk scaring her off.” A wheezy chuckle burst from his throat.
Bezel studied him, then curled his upper lip back to display even more of his jagged teeth. “If you don’t want to scare her off, then maybe you ought to dial back the ’great warrior’ crap and turn on some of that charm you’re supposed to have.”
Culhane grinned. “Charm, is it?”
“Don’t quote me,” Bezel told him. “I don’t see any charm, trust me. But my wife says you could charm the pookas out of Ireland—though why anybody’d want to mess with a blasted pooka is beyond me.”
“I knew Fontana liked me,” Culhane said, and enjoyed seeing the displeasure ripple across the pixie’s wrinkled face.
“Yeah, well. Never said my wife had taste.”
“Obvious enough that she doesn’t, since she married you.”
“Ha-ha. Very funny. A comic warrior. What nobody should be without.”
“You have a miserable disposition, Bezel. Did anyone besides me ever tell you that?”
“Only everyone in Otherworld. I’m a pixie. It’s my job.”
Irritating as he was, Bezel was right. They all had jobs to do. Duties to perform. And if Culhane didn’t get his mind back to business, they’d never get Maggie to the place she needed to be. Standing up again, he braced his feet wide apart, lifted his chin to the chill of the wind and narrowed his gaze on the woman across from him.
Her jeans were too tight, straining across her bottom as she reached again, swiping red paint atop an already painted tree until it looked as though ribbons had been threaded through its branches. She bit her bottom lip, and just for a moment Culhane thought about biting it for her. Bezel was right about that, too.
He did want Maggie Donovan.
And sooner or later he’d have her.
But for now . . .
“So . . .” Bezel jabbed his pointy elbow into Culhane’s knee to get his attention.
“What, you pestilential pixie?”
“Hey, don’t matter one way or the other to me,” Bezel said with a shrug. “I just wondered what you were planning to do about that Baranca demon sneaking up behind your girl there.”
“What?” Culhane’s gaze focused for a change not on Maggie, but on the tidily dressed “woman” coming up behind her as if to admire her painting. A human wouldn’t notice anything amiss. But Otherworlders—and some Demon Dusters—would know the woman for what she really was: a Baranca demon disguising herself as human. And since she was, at the moment, sneaking up on Maggie, Culhane could only think the demon had sensed the raw Fae power shimmering inside Maggie and was after it for itself.
“By the halls of Ifreann . . .”
“Looks like your girl’s not gonna last out the day.”
“Oh, shut up.” Culhane spared him a quick glare, then shifted with a swift, blurred motion. He reappeared behind the Baranca only long enough to sweep her away. Hopefully Maggie hadn’t noticed a thing. It wouldn’t do to have her think he was watching her. He wanted her to trust him, damn it, and being a Fae stalker wasn’t going to get that done.
He reappeared in the alley an instant later with one arm wrapped around the throat of a furious Baranca demon.
“What’d you bring it here for?” Bezel shouted.
“Let me go; you have no right!” The demon disguised as a woman stabbed one of its high heels at Culhane’s shin.
Culhane sidestepped, ignored the pixie, tossed the demon to the trash-strewn asphalt and braced himself when the Baranca rolled quickly to its feet. It straightened its shirt, smoothed its slacks and sneered, “The woman is mine.”
“You’re wrong.” Culhane swept in low and fast, taking the demon’s legs out from under it. It hit hard, but swiped out one clawed hand at his face. He dodged the blow, slipped his knife from the scabbard and stabbed it down into the center of the demon’s chest. Then he blew a stream of gold-dusted air at the demon and stood back while it exploded with a shriek of outrage.
“Now I got demon dust all over my damn suit,” Bezel complained. “Did you have to kill it here?”
Culhane wasn’t looking at him, though. Instead his gaze was fixed on Maggie, still painting, unaware of what had just happened.
“Yeah.” Bezel shook his head in disgust. “You’re horny, and she’s oblivious. This is gonna work out great.”
Eileen hopped in the car that afternoon with bright eyes and an excited smile.
“Good day, huh?”
“The best.” The girl squirmed around in her seat, buckled her seat belt, then turned to face Maggie. “First, Grant sent me a note—”
“What’d it say?”
“Private, hello?”
Maggie didn’t like the pleased gleam in her niece’s eyes, but after the weekend it would be Nora’s problem again. Please, God, let nothing else happen between now and the weekend. Was that too much to ask?
“Anyway, that’s not the best part.”
“Okay . . .” Maggie steered her car into traffic and headed for home. Her hands on the still-ruined steering wheel looked as festive as the coming season. She really lived her work. She had white, red, green and blue paint splashes all the way up her arms and collecting into dried clumps under her nails. A quick glance into the rearview mirror told her that her face hadn’t come out much better. She had streaks of white paint in her hair, and the splashes of red paint on her cheeks made her look like she was crying blood. No wonder the barista at Starbucks had looked at her so oddly.
Sighing, she asked, “What else, then?”
“In study hall I went on the Internet to check on—”
“Excuse me?”
Dramatic sigh. “Please. They have so many child locks on the Internet connection, we can barely sign on.”
“Good to know. Yay, PTA.” Hmm. Child locks. Maybe that was a thought for their home computer. Maggie’d have to talk to Nora about that when she got back. Please, God, let her come back soon. Maggie had far too much going on in her life right now: gorgeous Faeries and dead demons and golden tornadoes and floating feet and . . .
“Earth to Aunt Maggie!”
“Huh? Oh. sorry.”
“Anyway,” Eileen said pointedly before continuing, “I looked up Fae and Fenian warrior and Otherworld and everything else I could think of, and there’s some really good stuff there.”
Biting her lip, Maggie knew she shouldn’t be encouraging Eileen to follow up on all of this weirdness. In fact, she should be pretending that none of it was happening. But on the other hand she could really use some information. “Did you print it out?”
“Right. So what’s it say?”
“All kinds of things.” Eileen bent over, unzipped her backpack and rummaged inside for a minute. When she straightened up she had a stack of papers clutched in her hand. “I told my teacher it was for a report, so I guess I’ll have to write one.”
Since Eileen actually liked writing and was really good at it already, Maggie didn’t see how that would be a hardship.
As Eileen read, Maggie worked to concentrate on her driving. It wasn’t easy. While one corner of your brain was cataloging Faeries and pixies and banshees, of all things, another was watching out for pedestrians and cars driven by people who clearly got their licenses from mail-order catalogs. “Oh, for God’s sake, if you’re afraid to step on the gas stay home and call a cab!”
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