Bedeviled (3 page)

Letting her head fall against the seat back, Maggie blew out a breath. She didn’t know what to do.
Call the police
was her first thought, but she pooh-poohed that one right away. What could she possibly report? Yes, Joe was dead, but there was no body. And the thing that had killed him was gone, too. Besides, did she really want to call the police and open the conversation with,
Hello, I just killed a monster. Who do I talk to
?

Good for one free ticket to a luxurious stay at the nearest rubber room.

“Go get a mocha, Maggie. Starbucks. Where we head during a rough day. Yep. Mocha. Maybe a doughnut,” she told herself firmly. “Then go home. Where nothing weird ever happens.”

Good plan.

She grabbed the steering wheel with her still-glowing fingers and it snapped in two. She wanted to cry. “That’s just great. Great.”

Then, carefully holding on to what was left of her steering wheel, she fired up the engine and got the hell outta Dodge.

Culhane entered the small, old home with a blur of movement that would have been undetected by any human. If there’d been one around. But he knew the moment he shifted that he was alone in the place.

His long black hair fell to his shoulders, and he swung it back and out of his way as he moved silently through the house, cataloging every room in his mind.

There was a creative spirit alive in the room where canvases leaned against an easel and droplets of paint splashed the walls. He looked through the stacked paintings, feeding his curiosity. Most of them centered on the sea or the lighthouse. Misty wisps of fog crowded around fishing boats that looked like toys dropped into a sea so big it could swallow them. There was life here. And talent in good measure. But then, he’d expected no less.

He moved on. The next room was where she slept and dreamed. Her scent surrounded him as he noted the clothing dropped on the floors and chairs, as if she’d simply been too busy to pick them up. Sunlight filtered through the lacy curtains hanging at the windows as he left her room, her scent following him, tempting him. It seeped into his mind, his soul, and stirred something Culhane deliberately ignored.

He walked on, opening doors, exploring rooms that were empty yet pulsed with the memories of lives lived. Now she was imprinted on this place.
She
lived here. The one who had been foretold. The one he’d waited centuries for. Finally, today, it had begun. He’d felt the burst of power and sensed Maggie Donovan take her first step into his world.

He was tall, even for a Fenian, standing almost six feet, five inches. His legs were long, his arms muscular and the harsh planes of his face rarely twisted into a smile. He’d lived too long, fought too hard to find much worth smiling about.

And now, when the time of change had finally arrived, he would be forced to deal with a human woman to accomplish his goals.

“Human,” he muttered darkly, his gaze sweeping over the small rooms, crowded with what those of her kind no doubt believed to be necessities. Soft chairs, warm rugs, pillows on beds and in her kitchen, food enough to feed a clan of warriors.

Culhane prowled the house again, this time looking for hints into what kind of woman Maggie Donovan had become. He would need all the information he could gather for when he faced her to tell her of her destiny.

Maggie was supposed to be at the local hardware store, painting an idyllic holiday scene on the wide front windows. Yes, all that training and studying in art school had really paid off. Her hand-painted displays of clearance signs, going-out-of-business placards and Christmas scenes were the best in the state.

But at the moment she simply wasn’t in the mood to deal with painting smiling snowmen, dancing elves and holiday wreaths. Besides, she thought, who knew if she could hold a damn paintbrush without it snapping into kindling in her grip?

Her steering wheel was only a half circle now, thanks to the glow that hadn’t quite left her fingertips, so now probably wasn’t the best time to mingle with people who wouldn’t understand her sudden freakish strength any more than she did.

Fear was a small knot of misery in the pit of her stomach. She had to figure out what was happening to her. But for now what she had to do was pick up her niece at middle school.

A couple of years ago Maggie’s older sister, Nora, got a divorce and moved back to California with her daughter, Eileen. Now the two of them lived in the guesthouse behind Maggie’s place, and it had worked out well for everyone. At the moment Nora was in New Mexico at some drum-banging festival to get her chakras or some damn thing realigned, so Eileen was staying with Maggie.

At twelve, the youngest Donovan was tall and thin and blessed (or cursed, depending on your point of view), with the Donovan coloring: dark red hair, pale blue eyes and milky white skin. And just like her mother and aunt, if Eileen spent longer than fifteen minutes in direct sunlight, freckles dotted her skin until she looked as though she’d been sprinkled with gold paint.

No, she’d never get a tan, but there were compensations. All those cute blondes tanning to a luscious brown would one day have skin that looked like beef jerky. True, not much compensation when you were a pale twelve-year-old, but it was at least something to look forward to.

Maggie parked outside the school, watched the crowds of kids exploding from the old brick building and felt her tension sliding away. All it took was a few minutes here to bring her world back into its normal focus again.

This was real life. This was so far removed from the bizarre nightmare scene in Joe’s office, it was like a ray of sunshine spearing down out of a black sky.

Here she knew the rules: Don’t block the driveway, ignore the PTA psychos who were directing traffic and, most important, never hug Eileen in front of her friends.

Maggie scanned the herd of hundreds of kids for Eileen’s telltale height and distinctive hair. When she spotted her, Maggie grinned and reached across the seat to carefully open the car door.

“Hi,” Eileen said when she dropped into the passenger seat and shoved her backpack onto the floor at her feet. “You’ll never believe what happened. My best friend, Amber, was talking to Justin, who said Dennis told him that Grant said that he kind of liked me.” Her eyes were bright as stars. “Isn’t that cool? Amazing. Grant Carter likes
me
.”

Hmm.

Romance in the seventh grade.
God.
First Joe getting eaten, and now she had to worry about Eileen getting interested in boys. Nora should be here doing this.

“Uh, how old is Grant?”

Eileen hugged herself, then buckled her seat belt. “Oh, he’s already
thirteen
.”

Safe then, Maggie told herself. Or if not safe, then not exactly an emergency. If her niece had said this amazing, wonderful, supercool Grant Carter was fifteen, then Maggie would have had to lock her in a closet.

“Do you think Mom will let me wear makeup?”

“As soon as you’re twenty,” Maggie assured her, and started the car engine.

“That’s so rank.”

“It’s a hard, hard life.”

“It’s so not fair. Amber wears makeup,” Eileen pointed out. “
Her
mom cares about how Amber looks.”

“Hmm. Let’s call Amber’s mom. Maybe she’ll adopt you.”

“Ha-ha.” Eileen slumped down into her seat so low she could barely look out the windshield. Nobody pouted better than a Donovan.

Maggie steered the car toward Pacific Coast Highway and tried to ignore the deep sighs of depression coming from alongside her.

“How was school?”

“Same as always,” Eileen said with a dramatic groan. “Big building filled with boredom.”

“Good to know some things don’t change.” Maggie narrowly avoided a near collision with a delivery truck whose driver was text-messaging someone—she hoped it was a driving school—and said, “Do you have your cell phone with you?”

“Am I breathing?” Eileen dug the small dark red phone out of the pocket of her jeans and turned it on. “Why?”

Maggie kept her gaze on traffic and headed for home. “I need you to call Sam’s Hardware. Get the number from Information. I have to reschedule the paint job.”

“Thought you were doing it this morning.”

“Something came up.” Understatement of the century.

Eileen shrugged, got the number and dialed it, then handed Maggie the phone. She held it gingerly, half expecting it to shatter, as her steering wheel had.

“Hardware,” a deep voice announced.

“Hey, Sam? Maggie.”

“Where were you?” he demanded. “Weren’t you supposed to be here this morning?”

She winced, moved into the left lane and hit her blinker. “I know, I know, and I’m sorry, but something came up unexpectedly.”

Had it ever.

“It’s almost Thanksgiving, Maggie,” Sam announced, as if he were telling her something she didn’t know. “If I don’t get my Christmas scenes up soon, I’ll be the only shop on Main Street looking like the damn Grinch.”

She rolled her eyes. “Would I let that happen to you?”

“What’s wrong with your steering wheel?” Eileen asked.

She glanced at her niece. “Nothing. An accident.”

“You had an accident?” Sam blurted. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” Sure, fine. She saw people getting eaten every day. She was good. Maggie pulled into the driveway of her house and turned off the engine. “Look, Sam, I’ll be there tomorrow morning for sure. Snowmen, elves, candles and wreaths, all designed to make you look like Father Christmas.”

“Good, ’cause you know people won’t come in here and spend money unless I’m a nice guy, God damn it.”

Maggie shook her head. Sam was grouchy, demanding and irritating, and everyone in town knew it. He also was the only hardware store for miles, since Castle Bay, California, was way too small to attract one of those giant home stores.

But if Sam wanted to think of himself as a sweet-heart, she was willing to play into his delusions. Painting the wide bank of windows on his store was a two-hundred-dollar job.

“Right, Got it. I’ll be there.” She hung up, gingerly handed the phone to Eileen and gently pulled up the emergency brake.

“So who broke the steering wheel?”

“Me,” she said. “And before you ask, I don’t know how. It just . . . happened.”

“Well, that’s pretty weird.” Eileen picked up her backpack, opened her car door and got out, still talking. “You know, the average adult female uses only twenty percent of her body muscle mass.”

Maggie sighed. Eileen loved a good statistic and was forever quoting some obscure data. She claimed to get most of her information off the Internet, like any other good cyber-friendly preteen, but Maggie thought she made up most of them. Climbing out of her car, she followed Eileen down the shaded drive to the back of the house.

Normalcy seeped into her system as she listened to the everyday sounds of her neighborhood. The narrow street was crowded with trees so old they were tearing up the sidewalks. But every time the city tried to rip up the offending trees, the locals came out with lawn chairs, parked themselves beneath the giant maples and refused to move.

The shade was thick, the lawns were tidy and the houses were old.

Maggie’s place was almost a hundred years old. Her family had lived in the house for nearly sixty of those years, and her grandfather had done some pretty quirky remodeling. For example, the front door looked perfectly fine from the outside. Except for the fact that it didn’t open. Her grandfather had paneled right over the opening nearly twenty years ago. Why? Good question. One he’d never answered, along with why he’d thought turning his house into a miniature Winchester Mystery House was a good plan.

But Grandpa had liked working with wood, and Grandma always said it kept him out of her hair.

The house itself was wood-framed, California bungalow style, with a stone porch and wide windows. Ancient maple and oak trees studded the front and backyards and shaded both the main house and the guesthouse her grandfather built so that he could leave Grandma and still be around. He’d filled the guesthouse and the main house with what he always called “whimsy.”

Maggie smiled to herself.
Whimsy
didn’t even come close. There were doors that opened into walls. A tiny staircase that went nowhere. Windows that didn’t open and secret passages that led from bedrooms to kitchens to living rooms. As kids, she and Nora had loved living here. There was always a new mystery to be uncovered, and they had spent hours discovering hidey-holes.

Eileen handed Maggie her backpack. “I’m gonna go get my sweatshirt from home; then I’ll be right back.” She stopped, looked over her shoulder and said, “We do have cookies, right?”

Maggie laughed. “Am I alive?”

Eileen nodded and raced across the yard.

“Hey,” Maggie yelled. “Want hot chocolate?”

“With cookies?”

“Of course!” Maggie shook her head. When had she not had cookies? She unlocked her back door, stepped into the quiet of her kitchen and took a breath. The room was cozy, with plenty of space. This was the one place in either house that Grandpa hadn’t been allowed to putter in. So the counters, cabinets and floors were all just as they should be—no surprises.

There was a pedestal table in the center of the room and four chairs drawn up to it. The walls were a bright yellow that made even a dark day like today seem a little brighter. Maggie smiled to herself and felt a calm begin to seep into her bones. Good to be home. With Eileen. Dealing with hot chocolate and cookies.

If she just kept moving and didn’t stop to think, maybe she could stop remembering that scene in Joe’s office. Glancing down at her fingers she noticed that the glow thing was fading, and she hoped that when it went it took the memories along with it. Dropping her purse onto the pedestal table, she headed for the refrigerator to get the milk for hot chocolate.

That was when she felt it.

She wasn’t alone.

Chapter Two

F
ear grabbed the base of Maggie’s throat, and she took in the cold air drifting from the fridge in small, desperate gulps. The back door hadn’t opened, so she knew it wasn’t Eileen in the room with her. God, she didn’t want to look behind her. What if it was another one of those
things
?