Bedeviled (11 page)

“No, you don’t.” Nora reached over, picked up a pillow and smacked her sister in the head with it. She’d hopped a plane as soon as she’d gotten Eileen’s text, and she wasn’t going to wait another minute to hear about what had happened in her absence.

Nora’s dark red hair was the same shade as her sister’s, but the similarities ended there. She wore her hair short and spiky, and her eyes, Donovan blue, were tipped up at the corners, contributing to her elfin look. At the moment her mouth had the same stubborn tilt that all Donovan women seemed to possess.

“Damn it, Maggie, wake up and talk to me.” Nora felt as tight as the hide drawn across the top of Weeping Buffalo’s drum. Ever since she got her daughter’s text message about what had been happening at home, she’d been unable to think of anything else.

Now that she was here and could get some answers, she couldn’t even wake up her younger sister. “Don’t make me use Grandma’s never-fail wake-up call. . . .”

Maggie slitted one eye open. “If you dump a glass of ice water in my face, I’ll have to kill you.”

“Yeah, but you’d be awake. Now talk to me. I’ve been traveling for
hours
to get home.”

Maggie sighed, rubbed her eyes and muttered, “God, Nora, what did Eileen tell you, anyway?”

“Only what you should have told me. That you’re turning into a
Faery
.”

“Oh, crap.”

“Is it true?”

“I don’t know.”

“How can you not know?” She wanted to pull her hair out, but then thought about yanking on Maggie’s instead. Hers was longer, and this was all her fault anyway. “You are or you’re not. This is not something you guess about.”

“It is if you don’t want to think about it.” Maggie closed her eyes again.

“I’m not leaving until you’ve told me everything, so you can forget about going back to sleep, girl.”

“You are such a pain.”

“So I’ve been told. I’ve learned to live with it, and so should you. Talk already.”

She did. And once she got going the words seemed to tumble out of her mouth in such a rush that Nora could hardly keep up. Her heart galloped in her chest and her stomach was spinning by the time Maggie finished speaking, and Nora realized that what she was feeling was fury.

“I can’t believe this. This is so unfair.” She pushed off the bed, walked three steps, then spun around and stabbed one finger at her sister in accusation. “How come
you’re
the one with Faery power? I’m the one who’s into this stuff. I’m the one who believes in everything that you’ve always laughed at.” She threw her hands wide in complete exasperation. “I’m the one who was always begging Gran to tell me about the Fae! I even have a Faery tattoo on my butt!”

“Really?” Maggie lifted one eyebrow. “You never told me that.”

Grumbling under her breath, Nora kicked one of Maggie’s shoes out of her way as she started pacing again. “My tattoo isn’t the point.” She whirled around to look at her sister. “I don’t even believe this is happening.”

“Me neither.”

The coming dawn slid into the room through the white lace curtains. The two women stared at each other, and Nora said, “You don’t look any different, if you were wondering.”

“Actually”—Maggie pulled her hair back on the right and said—“now that you mention it, are my ears starting to look a little pointy?”

Nora walked closer and leaned in for a better look. “No more than they already were. Don’t you remember me telling you that Gran said the reason our ears were sort of tilted up is because of our Fae blood?”

“No, I don’t remember that at all.”

“Honest to God, this is just so unfair. I know all the stories and you get the Faery dust. How is this right?”

“Beats me.” Maggie looked up at her. “Did Grandma say anything else I should know about? Like, did she ever mention Mab or a guy named Culhane?”

“Culhane?” Nora frowned. “Is he the one Eileen said is a hunk?”

“Hunk and a half,” Maggie muttered, but she didn’t sound happy about it. “He makes me so mad, and then the very next minute he’s got me all hot and bothered and hoping he just tosses me onto the floor and—”

“Why do you have one hand tied to the bedpost?” Nora’s eyes bugged out and her mouth dropped open as she slapped Maggie in the face with a pillow again. “You’re not into weird stuff with this Culhane guy with
Eileen
in the house? Oh, my God, you Faery slut, you.”

“No!” Maggie would have given anything for another hour or two of sleep, but that was for damn sure not going to happen. “God, it’s too early for this. This isn’t kinky, and there is no me and Culhane. I just . . . tend to . . . float if I’m not tied down.”

“Float?” Nora’s eyes were still bugging. And even so, she managed to look gorgeous. Talk about unfair. “You mean like flying? You can freaking
fly
?”

She shrugged. “Maybe.”

Nora pushed a stack of clothes off a chair and dropped into it. Crossing her arms over her chest, she glared at her younger sister and muttered, “And this is all happening because you took Joe’s stuff back to him.”

“Basically. If I hadn’t gone there I never would have run into that creepy thing and wouldn’t have had to kill it and get submarined by a gold tornado. . . .” Something occurred to her, and Maggie smiled. “Which makes this sort of your fault.
You’re
the one who said I should go see Joe. Clean break and all that shit.”

“Well, if I’d known what would happen I would have gone for you.”

The thought of tiny little Nora facing down that man-eating demon was enough to terrify Maggie. “No, you wouldn’t,” she said softly. “It was scary, Nor. Seriously scary, and this whole thing has me freaked out like you wouldn’t believe. I’ve got this gorgeous Fae warrior popping in and out of my life—”

“Culhane.”

“Yes.”

“How gorgeous?

Maggie sighed. “The stuff dreams are made of.”

“Wow . . .”

“And I’ve got a bunch of demons after me, and a pixie from hell who’s snarkier than
we
are. . . .”

“Is that him sleeping in the oak out back? I thought I heard snoring when I came in.”

“Bezel. Yep, that’s him. He refused to sleep in a human’s ‘box.’ ” Maggie smiled wryly, remembering watching the pixie scramble up the tree with as much ease as a chimpanzee. He’d tucked himself onto a wide branch, then given her the evil eye and told her to leave him in peace.

Pushing up from the chair again, Nora walked to her sister’s side. She shoved Maggie’s legs over and sat down on the bed. “Man, I leave home for a few days, all hell breaks loose, and nobody even bothers to tell me about it until after the fact.”

“I was going to tell you. . . .”

“No, you weren’t.” Nora gave her a look.

“No, I wasn’t. I couldn’t think of a way to tell you on the phone, and you sounded happy, damn it. I didn’t want you to worry, and . . .” Scooting into a sitting position, Maggie pushed her hair back, scrubbed her hands over her face and admitted, “I knew you’d be bent out of shape about this.”

Nora huffed out a breath. “Can you blame me?”

“Hey, it may look like a good time to you, but trust me, so far it hasn’t been all happy, shiny party time, you know.”

“Right, right.” Nora blew out a breath. “I’m still jealous.”

“Can’t think why.”

“I know. That just makes it worse.” Then she shrugged. “I checked in on Eileen before I came to wake you.”

“She’s fine.”

“Yeah, but I had to see for myself. She’s really young to be dealing with Faeries and pixies.”

“If it helps any, I think Bezel’s afraid of her.”

Nora laughed, and some of the tension in her body drained away. Maggie looked at her and knew that her sister was both excited and terrified. It felt good to know that someone else was experiencing the same kinds of emotions she herself was.

“After I got Eileen’s text I went a little nuts,” Nora admitted. “I checked out of the motel, packed everything up and caught the first flight out. All I could think about was getting back here. Making sure you and Eileen were okay. I barely had time to say good-bye to Quinn before running to the airport.”

“That’s right,” Maggie said. “Where is this new guy? Thought he was coming home with you.”

“I left in such a hurry he couldn’t come along. He said he had a few things to wrap up first.”

“Hmm.”

“I know what you’re thinking,” Nora said with a frown. “Not like I wasn’t thinking the same thing the whole plane ride home. Is Quinn really going to come to me? Or was he just looking for a good thing while it lasted?”

“Nora—”

“He seems great, but I’ve been wrong about men before.”

Case in point, Maggie thought silently, Nora’s rotten-to-the-core ex-husband, who after seven years of marriage had left Nora for their babysitter, a nineteen-year-old bubblehead with an IQ to match her breast size.

“I know, I know,” Nora said quickly, waving both hands as if dismissing this whole conversation. “I shouldn’t fall so fast and so hard. But, Mags . . . when I met Quinn it was like this instant connection. I’ve never felt anything like that before. It was like we were supposed to meet. Like someone somewhere had set it all up for us. Like it was meant to be.”

Crap.
More destiny stuff. Though Nora’s sounded much better than hers.

“So why are you worried that he’s not going to show up?” Maggie’s voice was a hush in the quiet, and for a moment Nora felt as though they’d slipped back in time and they were kids again, whispering in the dark so their Gran wouldn’t hear them and know they were still awake.

“I’m trying not to be,” she admitted.

“Tell me about him.”

Nora smiled, and even in the pale light Maggie could see the shine in her sister’s eyes. Nora always had led with her heart, and it looked like this time she was already more than half in love with her mystery man.

“His name’s Quinn Terhune. He says he deals in futures.” She shrugged and picked at a loose chenille thread on Maggie’s pale green bedspread. “Stock market stuff, I guess. But oh, God, when he touches me I’m on fire.”

“I know that feeling,” Maggie said.

Nora’s lips quirked. “Tell me it’s not the tree-sleeping pixie.”

She laughed. God, it was good to have Nora back. With everything else in her life so off-kilter, hearing her sister give her a hard time was enough to straighten things out a little.

“Definitely not Bezel. Culhane. Which is just as bad, if not worse. He’s opinionated and bossy and annoying and wouldn’t even peel me off the ceiling the first time I floated.”

“But . . .” Nora scrambled over Maggie and took a seat on the other side of the bed.

“But,” Maggie admitted on a sigh, “there’s something there. I don’t know what, but the man’s hands are like electric or something. He touches me and I’m burning up.”

“Wow.” Nora scooted around until her back was against the headboard, too. “Sounds like what it’s like with Quinn. Weird, huh? I swear, though, from the moment I met Quinn it was like . . . magic.”

“Magic?” A tiny thread of worry spun out through Maggie’s system as she thought about her sister’s choice of words. What if there were more going on here than even she knew about? Culhane and Bezel both had warned her that there were demons and, heck, who knew what else out there gunning for her. What if one of them had found her sister and was planning on using Nora to get to Maggie?

Along with that thread of worry came a white-hot slide of anger, too. Eileen and Nora hadn’t signed up for the Fae business. And damned if Maggie was going to allow her family to get dragged into this mess.

“Nora,” Maggie said thoughtfully, “what are the odds that the two of us—with our lousy history with men—would each meet a guy like that? In the same week?”

Slowly Nora tuned her head to look at her sister. “You don’t think—”

“I don’t want to. But I think we ought to find out what exactly’s going on. If your guy Quinn is a demon or something, we have to know.”

Nora stiffened, her features tightening. “He’s not.”

“Hope you’re right.”

“But what if he is?” Nora straightened up. “Then I had sex with a
demon
, for God’s sake, and invited him
home
, where he can get my daughter!”

“Nobody’s going to get Eileen.” Maggie patted her hand. “When Culhane shows up again, I’ll ask him what’s going on.”

“And if Quinn gets here before Culhane comes back?”

“Well, then,” Maggie said as she untied her wrist from the bedpost, “we’ll just have to handle it ourselves.”

Nora looked up at her. “That probably would have sounded more commanding if you weren’t floating.”

Chapter Six

C
ulhane shifted a hard look down a side street in Castle Bay. He’d come through the portal to check up on Maggie Donovan, but instead he was here, tracking a demon.

The blasted things were all over this little town, and the humans didn’t have any idea. How was it, he wondered, that mortals could be so oblivious to their surroundings? How had they survived all this time without being able to sense danger?

A glamour could alter a demon’s—or a Fae’s, for that matter—appearance. But the essence of who and what they were remained. Humans seemed to deliberately ignore any sign or hint of something out of the ordinary. If they felt watched, they put it down to paranoia. If something cold touched them, they told themselves they were imagining it.

They had no sense of self-preservation.

Culhane pushed away from the brick wall and moved through the crowd of pedestrians unseen. As much as these mortals baffled him, the fact that they were so unaware worked to his advantage most of the time. He moved among them, unseen unless he wished it different. Foolish humans were completely oblivious to the many and varied threats that moved among them.

Scents and sounds surrounded him, so different from home. Here the colors were harsh, the noise a cacophony. His footsteps, though, were sure as he moved swiftly down a crowded sidewalk, darting through the crowd, his purpose uppermost in his mind.

He’d been watching over Maggie and had seen the demon confront her in the grocery store. Though she hadn’t risen to the creature’s challenge, she’d found a way to escape it, so Culhane hadn’t intervened. He might even have allowed the demon to live if the same creature hadn’t been following her that morning. Clearly the demon still had plans to finish Maggie off and claim the Faery dust for itself.